


Tiger Tiger Burning Bright

by angelt626, MsMockingbird



Series: The Mockingverse [28]
Category: Avengers, Hawkeye - Fandom, Ka-Zar – Fandom, Mockingbird - Fandom
Genre: F/M, Mind Control, Other, Pregnancy, Serial Killer, diplomatic immunity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2020-07-25 01:58:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 29,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20024680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelt626/pseuds/angelt626, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsMockingbird/pseuds/MsMockingbird
Summary: Mockingbird has a few interesting ex’s in her past and another one shows up at Avengers Towers...and they might have brought a serial killer along with them





	1. Saber Tooth Kitteh

The Avengers were in Central Park, hanging out at the Sheep Meadow. They had a small designated area off to one side that was discretely fenced off; Stark paid for the maintenance of the entire Meadow in exchange. A permanent sunshade held several deck chairs and a picnic table. Currently Steve Rogers and Clint Barton were lounging in two of the chairs. Steve was reading. Clint was watching the one-step-off-full-contact Frisbee game going on amongst the rest of the team. Both Steve and Clint usually recused themselves from the game. Too easy for them.

"They're going throw Bucky off the field soon," Clint remarked, taking a long drink from his water bottle. Steve looked up, squinted at the game, then grinned at the archer. 

"Who'd he hit?"

"Got Bruce right under the armpit and bounced it into Rhodey and then Thor on the rebound...and there we go."

Thor threw up his hands in a universal 'flag on the play' motion and a heated argument broke out between Bucky and well...everyone else. He appeared to appeal to Natasha, who mercilessly pointed at the deck chairs with the Frisbee in her hand. Bucky tossed his long hair out of his face and stomped over to the two blonds.

"Assholes," he muttered under his breath as he took a chair and bottle of juice from the cooler. 

"Language," Steve said, not looking up.

"Welcome to the marksmen club," Clint laughed at him, then returned to idly watching the bare sweaty skin on display. All of the men were wearing board shorts of various lengths and shirtless in the warm humid New York summer. Nat was in a boy short bikini; Sharon in jean shorts and a sleeveless tshirt and Bobbi in an intricate strappy halter top and skin tight capris. "If you hadn't been showing off you'd still be playing."

"It was worth it," Bucky said, gulping the drink and fishing out another. He leaned back, shoving the recliner down and closed his eyes, grinning.

"I know what you me...." Clint stopped abruptly, craning his neck and then standing up to look south east. "Bucky. You see this?"

"See whaaaaaaa..." Bucky sat up and looked in the same direction as Clint, his voice fading out like it fell off a cliff.

Steve jerked to his feet, looking south east. "What?" he snapped, the mantle of Captain America dropping over him in a breath.

"That," said Clint, pointing.

Pointing at the very large tawny hunting cat currently bounding across the green grass of the Meadow straight for them. It was moving at a fearsome rate, scattering picnickers left and right. From that scale is was huge, almost hulk sized.

"Can't we just get one afternoon?" Clint said plaintively, even as all three men stood up and rushed forward. The moment they cleared into the sun they were noticed by the rest of the team. As one they whipped around to face in the same direction. Mjolnir flashed to Thor's hand; Iron Man and War Machine's armors booted up and lumbered forward. Sharon spun and ran past Steve and the marksmen, headed for the weapons case. 

Bobbi shaded her eyes, stared at the oncoming predator and cursed loudly.

"Oh, hell no!" she yelled...and then sprinted on a collision course with the animal.

"Bobbi!" screamed Clint.

The huge cat -- the huge _saber toothed tiger_ from the curved fangs hanging down over its jaw -- gathered itself and leapt into the air in a massive bound, mouth open in a shattering roar. It landed on the small form of Mockingbird, who'd vaulted the low fence into the open. Wrapping its forelimbs about her, the beast's mouth gaped open and latched over her face. They rolled together, ending up with the human woman on her back as the enormous cat...

…licked her face and arms like a kitten

"No, no, no!" Mockingbird protested, laughing wildly. "You'll skin me alive, Zabu!"

She pushed the wide muzzle and dagger like fangs away from her, then stood up and gripped the big animal by the ears, hands scratching hard. Her arms were reddened and a spot on her cheek was raw and beading blood from the cat's rough tongue.

A deep rumbling noise vibrated through the air.

The saber-toothed tiger was purring, nearly knocking Bobbi off her feet with thrusts of his head into her legs and torso like a housecat might.

The team advanced as one, all of them open mouthed and astonished. When they'd passed the fence line the big cat looked up, golden eyes narrowing and hissed, shoving Bobbi behind him and taking up a defensive stance. Bobbi smacked him lightly across the ears. 

"Zabu. No. This is my team, my friends. Bad kitty." The cat flopped onto his back, waving his paws in the air and wriggling. Bobbi leaned over to caress the massive predator's tummy, looking up at the team. "Guys, this is Zabu, an old friend." She straightened up and brushed long tawny fur off her capris. "Ka-Zar, I know you're there. Get your aristocratic butt out here and apologize to Zabu for nearly getting him killed."

There was a deep chuckle from a nearby tree and a big blond man in a what looked like leather shorts hopped down lightly, followed by a bikini clad blond woman. Both were powerfully built and gorgeous. Bobbi eyed them both, smiling, then darted forward to hug the man tightly. He returned the embrace, turning to release her into the woman's arms for another embrace. The cat wove around them, that huge reverberating purr echoing. 

"Bobbi," said Steve sternly. "What's going on here?"

"Oh, yeah, sorry." Bobbi disengaged from the group hug and stepped to one side. "Avengers, this is Lord Kevin Plunder and Lady Shanna Plunder, also known as Ka-Zar and the She-Devil. The saber tooth kitteh is Zabu."

From the back of the group Falcon said clearly: "Of COURSE she knows someone named 'Lord Plunder'." 

Bobbi gesturned from one group to the other. “Ka-zar, Shanna, please meet the Avengers, my team mates."

Ka-zar stepped forward and held out his hand to Steve. "Even in the Savage Land, we know of the Avengers. It is my honor, Captain America." He greeted each Avenger with grave courtesy and in a slightly stilted formal way until he reached Thor. The two big blond men eyed each other, then Ka-Zar gave a slight bow, just from the shoulders. “Your majesty.”

“You were once of my lady Barton’s war-band?” Thor rumbled.

“I was her lover,” Ka-Zar stated dryly. Shanna, making her own way down the line of Avengers, stopped to laugh. Bobbi grinned ruefully, rubbing her face.

“OH REALLY?” Clint was looking directly at Bobbi when he said. 

“I told you I wasn’t kidding about that,” Bobbi replied. 

“Is every one of your ex-boyfriends going to be either startling or evil?” Natasha asked Bobbi.

“Probably,” was the bland response. “I’m running out though.” 

Thor through his head back and laughed, sticking out his hand to Ka-Zar. “If you took our valkyrie to your bed I know you must be a man of great courage. I offer you the friendship of a Prince of Asgard!”

*****

They adjourned to the Tower, Bobbi fussing over her guests on the communal level while everyone else showered and changed. When they all returned to the main pool deck Zabu was snoozing contentedly in the sun with the entire duck clan either on his back or between his paws, also sleeping. Bobbi was sitting on the picnic table (which was covered in snacks and pitchers of cold drinks), listening with rapt attention to Shanna and Ka-Zar stood by the railing, gazing out over the city. 

Clint joined the bigger man, alone. (Nat discreetly herded off anyone trying to join them.)

“So, Lord Plunder. Nice to meet you finally. I honestly thought you were a figment of my wife’s perverse sense of humour.” Clint turned around and leaned his back to the railing, looking back at the group gathered around the two big blond women. 

Ka-Zar made a non-committal noise in his chest. “We do not spend a great deal of time in modern society, Shanna and Zabu and I. But when we have ventured out, we learned of the Avengers, and you — Hawkeye, master archer. We learned that you were mated to a woman I had once thought to take to wife, and still care much for.” 

“That a problem, buddy?” Clint said in a tight, edgy voice. 

“If it had been, one glance upon her now would be enough to dispel any concerns. In the time she spent with me I had thought she was vibrant, brave, powerful — she was but a pale shadow of who she is now. Any man who could cause that change in my Doctor Morse is a man worth knowing.” Ka-Zar turned to him and held out his hand again, as though he had not already greeted him earlier. “I would be friend to you, Clint Barton, husband of Bobbi.”

Clint looked at him a moment, then turned and yelled in the direction of the group at the picnic table. “I’m bonding with this one too, little bird. Suck it up.” 

The response, as he turned to clasp Ka-Zar’s hand, was so foul Captain America slapped his hand over Bobbi’s mouth before she could finish the phrase. 

*****

_Eighteen Hours Earlier, Hell’s Kitchen, New York_

Ashley literally threw the last drunk out of the Sea Change bar, not caring much if he landed in the gutter. He’d been handsy with the waitstaff all night and she was too tired to care about being politic. Third Saturday in a row two of her bouncers hadn’t even shown up to work, not even calling in. She was getting too old for this, that was why she’d moved to tending bar. 

What staff had bothered to show were her best, at least, and the tills were cashed out, the bar cleaned and prepped, the floor swept, the garbage collected and ready to go. On a whim she sent them all home early — though she knew most would wind up at an after hours joint nearby. She’d probably join them, honestly. Her little studio was spare and cold at this time of night, all stark shadows and thin futon.

Her night porter, Rodrigo, showed up on time at least. He was a good man, kind, smart — he taught Spanish classes at the Thunder Dojo’s night school. She paid him in cash and never asked him to fill out paper work.

He smiled at her and just started hauling out trash bags as usual. She did an ‘idiot check’ of the banquettes, the bathrooms — in a good state, she was proud of her staff for keeping them clean like that…and realized it had gotten awful quiet.

She ventured out, cautiously heading for the bar and her shot gun. It wasn’t unknown for someone to trying a robbery at closing. She couldn’t hear Rodrigo anywhere…

A breeze hit her, the back door, just around a bend towards the kitchen, must be open. Shotgun in hand, Ashley head that way.

Rodrigo’s body was sprawled in the door way, blocking it from closing. He was draped over the bag of trash. She rushed to him, and found herself staring down at ribbons of flesh and a spreading pool of blood.

She gasped, copper and iron and salt blooming on her tongue.

She thought _I am tasting his face._

There was a rush of motion in the alley outside and in the half-shadows she saw…claws and fangs.

The claws pierced her shoulders, holding her still.

The fangs closed over her throat.

She did not have time to scream.

She stopped breathing.

She died.


	2. Country Mouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And exactly why are Ka-Zar and Shanna in New York anyway?

"I finally got my lab, Ka-Zar," Bobbi Barton said cheerfully as she waved the lights up in the square, clinically clean room. She, Bruce and Tony still shared a space across the corridor but she needed more sterile conditons for some of her work. This was her personal bio-chem laboratory. 

Shanna and Ka-Zar looked around, seeming very out of place in their primitive clothing. Zabu had remained on the common floor, now ensconced in front of the TV with Natasha and Sam using him for a rumbling pillow as they watched a movie. 

Bobbi tapped her computers on, then gestured at the wide specimen table in the center of the room. "Shanna, wanna hop up? I can give you that pre-natal exam you're clearly in the market for." She turned to see the two blonds staring at her, Shanna in something like shock, Ka-Zar with mirth. 

"I so advised you, She-Devil. This woman is a canny and wise as the hedge witches of the Savage Land."

Shanna shook her head as she moved to the table. "I thought your admiration was just a man's inability to admit any fault in a woman he desired."

"Oh, he never thought I was perfect, Shanna. I irritated the hell out of him. That whole 'when a man loves a woman' thing is all on your head." Shanna seated herself with graceful ease on the exam table. Bobbi looked over and tapped her palms together, then spread them apart. A wire-frame cloned image of Shanna's torso appeared in the air in front of her and began to slowly fill in with detail.

"This isn't xrays or anything dangerous, its proprietary Starktech low intensity lidar based scanning..." Bobbi looked up to matching identical confused expressions. "See, this is what I was talking about, Shanna. I am firmly a child of the modern world and always will be. Take the girl out of the city, the city is still in the girl. The Savage Land would have been the death of me."

"And yet your preferred weapon is nothing more than a stick," Ka-Zar pointed out.

Bobbi laughed, manipulating the image in front of her, tapping and flicking data into separate lists and groups in the air. "These days my 'simple sticks' are forged by Tony Stark himself out of some weird alloy. They have snap out blades lined with monomolecular diamond and I can turn them into a staff. I wear HUD equipped goggles and a bullet proof flight suit. And believe you me, sport, I need it all."

"That all seems so complicated. I like the simplicity of the field and jungle, of the hunt. Of trees and grass, not metal and concrete," Shanna said, watching Bobbi's face curiously. 

Bobbi smiled at them both. "I think we all made a good decision when Ka-Zar and I broke of the engagement. I mean if nothing else, I'd never have met Clint." She stopped and shuddered, her mouth in a thin line a moment. 

"He seems a good man, Bobbi. He treats you well?" Ka-Zar said, leabning on the table next to his wife.

"He does, yeah" Bobbi said in a distracted tone, then looked up from the nearly fleshed out simulation. "Okay, so. First, yes, you're pregnant, just nearing the end of the first trimester, I expect you'll carry pretty small, just from your frame and general condition. Fetus is well placed, no genetic anomalies I can see. Either of you wanna know the genetic gender?"

They both shook their heads, no.

"Copy. Look I'm no OB-GYN so don't take anything I'm saying as gospel but I don't see anything in your blood work or the fetus' that's cause for concern, other than the usual stuff." She leaned over and tapped a few things into the nearest laptop; acorss the the lab a 3-D printer began to hum and chitter at high speed. "I'm going to print you out some hyper-focused pre-natal vitamens -- what's your diet like these days?"

Ka-Zar spoke of the animals they hunted, the wild fruits and vegtables they plucked, the grain and bread they traded for. Bobbi nodded and made some adjustments on her computer, changing the pitch of the printer a little.

"Avoid raw meat and fish till the baby is off breast milk, okay?" Bobbi laughed at Shanna's expression. "I know, I know, but even in the Savage Land parasites are a thing. You're going to need to increase your calorie intake, way more than you think -- the metabolic load of pregnancy is crazy high. And listen to your body, if you crave a thing it's usually for a reason. The vitamens I'm printing out for you will be high in folic acid, calcium and iron; vitamin D I'm not worried about for you. Try not to eat any liver though, till after the birth. If any toxins have worked their way into the eco system down there, that's where they'll show up. I've improved the formulas on this stuff, and it's keyed to your blood chemistry so you can take just the one pill a couple times a week, it'll slow release from there." She walked to the printer and returned with a container full of small green lozenge shaped pills. "Other than that, you can probably just keep your regular routine. Maybe don't wrestle any dinosaurs for a bit?" Bobbi grinned and handed over the container to Shanna, who tucked it gratefully into a side pouch on her belt, after opening it and swallowing one.

Ka-Zar touched his wife's shoulder and she reached up her own hand to squeeze his. "Thank you, Doctor Morse," Ka-Zar said in his most formal tone. "Thank you for caring for my wife and unborn child as your own kin."

"Oh, the kid better be calling me Auntie Bobbi by the time it speaks, sport!" she declared cheerfully, shutting off her equipment, stopping to check a few running experminents in the process.

"Have you never thought of having a child...Bobbi?" aske Shanna as she got down from the table. She and Bobbi hadn't known each other well before she left the Savage Land and much of that time had been tense, as Shanna supplanted Bobbi in Ka-Zar's affections. But a few run-ins with wild beasts and other dangers, faced together, had forged a tentative bond. In the years since they'd all met again from time to time and a quiet, rather formal, affection had grown between the two woman. Bobbi was not a jealous type and Ka-Zar and Shanna were so well suited to each other it seemed to bring her happiness to see them tgether. 

Bobbi shook her head. “Nah. Clint and I talked about it right away cause that’s the kinda thing that wrecks a marriage fast if you’re not on the same page. But, well, we’d have to leave the team. No way to be a responsible parent and an Avenger.”

“And that is so important, then?” asked Ka-Zar. He and Shanna had followed Bobbi into the elevator, which was ascending. 

Bobbi turned to him as it stopped and opened into a small hallway, leading to an open door. “There’s hundreds of millions of people who can be good parents, Ka-Zar. There’s like…a dozen of us, us Avengers. And yeah, we are ‘so important’. We’ve been the thin red, white and blue line stopping the apocalypse more than a few times. 

I can’t be a good mother and go charging into a battle with an extra-terrestrial army on a wing and a prayer, especially since my partner’s going to be charging along with me. Hell, one lucky missile strike and the kid’d be an orphan AND have every person I’d trust to keep them safe wiped out in one go.” She turned away and walked towards the open door, raising her voice so they could hear her. “Motherhood was never a goal of mine, never an ambition. But this place? This team? This is family, found and made, as sure as any blood of mine or Clint’s. This is my legacy. Predatory alien empires fear Earth, my lord and lady, because of the Avengers. Plagues have been prevented, disasters held at bay, genocides thwarted. We keep the planet safe. Every child born after those moments is spiritually mine, but I don’t have to change diapers.”

The lights in the apartment came on as they entered it. It was neutrally furnished, with comfortable clean furniture, a basic kitchen. Zabu padded into the main room from what was clearly a bedroom off the living room. He greeted Ka-Zar with rough affection, gently lipped Shanna’s hand, butted Bobbi in the knees for an ear rub.

Bobbi gestured around her with her free hand. “You three slept in the park last night — don’t deny it! — and you’d probably prefer it but umm…there are just too many assholes with too many guns in this city, Ka-Zar. Please, will you all stay here, with us, until you leave? There’s food, water, toiletries, all procured by the inestimable Pepper Potts. It’ll be too stuffy and enclosed and hot and the wrong kind of noisy but the idea of you running into someone with an automatic weapon and nothing to lose terrifies me.”

Shanna laughed. “I would rather nest in a tree then sleep in this unnatural tower but I know to listen to a hunter on their own ground.”

Ka-Zar was a little more thoughtful, pacing around the space, Zabu stalking with him. “Bobbi — my Doctor Morse — I think we will stay here, in this place of safety, fo the sake of our unborn only. If it were just us, I would also want to take to the trees. I would ask you though—” he stopped, and looked at Shanna with very little expression. 

Bobbi knew him though. He was not an emotive man; he didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. The look he gave to his wife was rich with love, and concern, and a possessive pride, if you knew what his tells were.

She’d seen the same thing in Clint’s eyes, looking at her.

“You say you could not be an Avenger and a mother, because of the danger. Do you think us…me…reckless? To bring new life to the Savage Land?”

Bobbi blinked at him, genuinely surprised. “Shit, you’re thinking about moving back to England, aren’t you? That’s part of why you’re making this trip, to see if you all can handle living in this world?”

“You should come back to the Savage Land and set yourself up as an Oracle, in some lonely cave. People would soon worship you as a goddess, I think,” Shanna said, dryly. She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, taking out a container of milk and rummaging for a glass. 

“It had occurred to me that I have the right to endanger myself, and Shanna the right to live as she pleases but an infant cannot chose,” Ka-Zar said, grave and quiet. “The Savage Land is not so named because it is a gentle place.”

Bobbi made a frustrated gesture. “I can’t make that decision for you, but it’s—it’s not the same thing. Okay the dinosaurs are a little startling. The mutates are dangerous assholes. The lack of streaming video is horrifying. But you’re not crouching in the mud hitting yourself in the head with a stick. You have a home, resources, friends, skills. People have been living in the Savage Land since it became a land. They’d been raising babies there for thousands of generations. It’s…simpler than here but not…worse. Not primitive or unhygienic or bad. It’s just different. And it’s the only place in the world I think the three of you can be happy.”

She walked over to Ka-Zar and gently laid her hand on his cheek. “Love your child Ka-Zar. Teach it to be strong like its father, and brave like its mother and wily like its saber toothed grandfather Zabu. Making yourselves miserable trying to fit into a world you loathe won’t help with any of that.”

Shanna joined them, laying her hand on Bobbi’s shoulder. “Thank you for that wisdom, Doctor Morse. That is what is in my heart too, and I hope now that both the women he’s thought of taking to wife have spoken the same truth to him, this great lump of a man might finally listen.”

******

In Central Park a lithe figure, moving fast, darted from shadow to shadow under the treeline. When light did touch it, it seemed to dance on dark stripes criss crossing skin… and then freeze on the flash of a fang like a dagger when lips skinned back from teeth.

Claws scraped along the bark of trees, leaving behind deep grooves that reeked of sap, resin and wood shavings.

The Hunter snarled, tasting the wind. Her prey had fled, their scent old and drying rapidly. They had left the safety and comfort of the trees, and along with a large group of humans (or were they all? They smelled strangely, many of them, of metal bathed fed by living blood, of sparking ozone, of death and passion and … fresh bread?).

And they had all left together, moving south. Away from trees and shadows and cover, into the miasma of garbage and hot concrete where she could not follow. 

Shaking her head, snarling a little, the Hunter turn and moved deeper into the shadows. 

Her master would know where they had gone, she was sure of it. He had said he would returned for her when the sky lightened towards day.

Endlessly patient, the Hunter found a suitable tree to perch in and lifted her eyes to the tall, strange building she could see to the south, with its blazing “A” like a beacon. 

The Hunter sat back in her haunches.

And she waited.


	3. Ret-Conn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint makes a fairly startling personal revelation
> 
> TW: homophobic language in a flash back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, okay.
> 
> This is a correction to a thing I screwed up when I conceived the Mockingverse. 
> 
> This is my one and only ret-conn of the ‘verse, to correct a character error I made four years ago.
> 
> If i’d been thinking right this would have been clear from the beginning.

The next afternoon there was a team meeting.

Clint, Bobbi and Natasha got to the room early and clustered around the snack fridge. All three of them looked tense and anxious.

Natasha poured out a handful of pistachios for each of them, then replaced the bag. Clint slammed the whole handful, chewing hard. Bobbi picked at hers, delicately. Nat ate her own a few at a time.

“It’s still up to you, Clint,” she said eventually, as though continuing a conversation held telepathically. “It’s your secret. Our project dies on the vine but neither of us is going to complain.”

“It shouldn’t be a secret though. I’m tired of it being a secret,” he said, slurring a little as he finished chewing. 

“I’m scared about…” Bobbi stopped, looking away for a moment. “I’m honestly scared about Steve, okay? I don’t even think there’s a single reason why and I’m still scared about Steve.”

“Not?” Natasha said, with a quirked brow.

“No, actually. This hate is _learned_ and I don’t think Hydra bothered to reassemble that part of his brain,” Bobbi said, with a grimace, as though the idea wasn’t entirely palatable. 

Clint reached out laid his hands on each of their shoulders. “Just feed me the lines, okay? I’ll take care of everything else.”

When the rest of the team got there, they were in their usual seats, acting normal. 

“Get your feet off the table, Clint,” Steve said as he entered the room, not even looking in the archer’s direction. Clint caught the single pistachio he’d been idly bouncing off pieces of equipment and took his feet off the table. The meeting went swiftly, not much had been happening lately, other than the Plunder’s and Zabu showing up.

“The Security Council has re-sent that request to ‘borrow’ myself, Bobbi, Clint and James, Steve. With a proper threat assessment and outline this time; I feel it looks good but I think everyone should read it and give their opinions.”

“Agreed,” Steve said as everyone’s personal Starkphones chimed ‘message recieved’ with various noises. 

That left Bobbi to do the ‘social media’ round up this month—she and Sam traded it off. She detailed the normal level of death threats, conspiracy theories and requests for charity donations: they would be variously ignored, laughed at and granted (if possible) by Stark International. 

Finally Bobbi paused and tapped her Starkpad. “There’s a sex scandal that’ll break soon, FYI, and it’s going to startle some of you,” she said, her voice unusually low and tentative.

“What are you actually pregnant with Thor’s baby this time?” Tony asked dryly.

“No. A Ukrainian diplomat who was extracted from a Russian prison is about to give a tell-all interview to a British tabloid; Gemma got word of it, probably through Lance, and gave me the heads up.”

“Honey trap?” Asked Sam.

“Yeah, but not … not who you think.”

“He was one of the last targets Clint and I were set after. And he’s gay,” Natasha said abruptly. 

There was a very profound silence in the room. Everyone but Bobbi was looking at Clint suddenly. 

Clint himself was staring at the ceiling, leaning back in his chair. He did look around long enough that everyone could see his narrowed eyes and tense mouth. “Yeah. It’s true.”

“Did Fury…” Steve started to say and then stopped abruptly. His voice was shaking just a little and Bobbi, glancing at him, realized it was with rage. “Was it consen—”

He didn’t finish the word because Clint was suddenly on his feet, hand slamming to the table top. “If Fury had ever tried to force me to do anything non-consensual I’d have killed him, Rogers. Don’t you ever dare think I’d take advantage of—”

“I was thinking about you, not this … other person,” Steve snapped, now also on his feet. 

Collectively, everyone but Bruce was suddenly up, like they were about to brawl in a bar. 

“Hold up, hold up!” Yelled Tony. “Before someone wrecks the finish on the table. Calm the hell down.” He turned to the archer. “Just spell it out, Hunger Games. We all know you wouldn’t…force yourself on any one but like…it wasn’t forced on you?”

Clint, mouth set and hard, nodded abruptly. “There was a full analysis. We all knew what the mission was and … before anyone gets some stupid movie BS in their head when _we_ did honey trap stuff it wasn’t some elaborate long term thing, no drugs or coercion. We—Nat and I—only resorted to it when there was no other in, no other way to distract someone.” He placed both his hands on the table and leaned forward. “This guy wasn’t my first. I’m bisexual. I was when you met me and I was ten minutes ago and I am now and I’m real tired of hiding it.”

Steve Rogers turned on his heel and walked out of the room.

Clint actually recoiled, like he’d been punched, staring after the other man. A collective gasp went up from just about everyone else. Everyone but Bucky, who was looking after Steve with an unusually somber expression even for him. 

‘It’s not…it’s not what it looks like,” Bucky said softly, into the stunned silence. “He’s not upset for why you think he is.”

“Well it sure looks like Captain America just stormed out of the room in a homophobic snit,” Bruce said, which was what they were all thinking.

“Oh, _shit_!” Bobbi suddenly exclaimed, hands to her mouth, staring at Bucky in horror. “Oh shit oh shit oh shit. I didn’t even think about that—”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like he talks about it much,” Bucky said laconically, then left the room almost as abruptly as Steve, clearly chasing after him.

Bobbi sat down, her face in her hands, gasping for breath. 

“Before you have a panic attack, Bobbi, what the hell?” Sam asked.

“Steve’s not…I mean I don’t think he’s upset because of _you_ Clint,’ she said, raising her head, eyes glistening. “I think we just threw him into a serious nose dive of bad memories.” She wiped at her face. “I mean think about it. Little guy, artist, sensitive, thoughtful, kind? In the 20’s and 30’s? In the slums of New York? Zero percent chance he didn’t get gay-bashed. Bucky probably got called slurs too, for hanging out with him.”

“This is one of those things about Midgard I will never understand,” Thor said, his voice quieter than normal. “Desire cares not for form. I have commanded many warriors who were bonded lovers with another of their sex. Tis common in Asgard, unremarkable.”

Normally one of them would have given Thor a hard time over his “Asgard is SOOOOO much more advanced” routine but right then they all felt it was true.

Clint became the third person to exit the room abruptly, but Natasha stopped him as he cleared the door.

“Clint, you heard James. Steve didn’t mean—”

“Nat,” Clint said, his voice cold and hard, stopping her words dead. He didn’t turn around. “Whatever he meant by walking out on me coming out to the team it didn’t _feel_ very good. I’ll be at the range.” And then he was gone.

Bobbi sat back and looked at the ceiling. “ _This_ is what my gut was warning me about, Nat. _This_ is why I was worried about Steve. I should have known; this is on me.”

Bruce sighed. “How long have you three been planning to tell everyone?”

“Couple years. Time was never right, with our lives we realized it was never going to be perfect, so—” Bobbi replied, distantly. 

“You knew before you married him?” Tony asked, getting up to go to the wet bar and pour himself a drink. Bobbi made gesture at him; he drew her a couple fingers of spiced bourbon and stuck the glass in her hand on the way back to the table. She shot it in a gulp, wincing. 

“Remember how I was the strat/tac analyst for SHIELD Black Ops? I’m the one who figured out the diplomat was gay.”

Natasha had replaced Tony at the bar but after she poured herself vodka and cranberry juice she made a round for everyone, including Tony and Bobbi again.

“To be clear, Clint also knew that _before_ the mission started. There were other operatives we could have sent in but…Clint was perfect combo of physical type and operative level,” Natasha said, handing around the cold glasses of ruby liquid. “He and Coulson and I talked it out which is when he told us about his childhood and—”

“What about his childhood?” said Sam, perking up. This was his domain when it came to team dynamics, how their pasts affected them.

“When he was being raised in the ‘Circus of Crime’”—it appeared physically painful to Natasha to say the ridiculous title—”it was nearly entirely young men. In retrospect there were grooming behaviours evident from Trickshot and Barney seems to have protected Clint from predation on a few occasions. But Clint had consensual homosexual experiences there. He also sought out women. Outside the Circus, being with women was just easier, socially.”

That got a nod from the rest of the men, quite enthusiastic from Tony. 

“Frankly, I don’t think ‘bi’ is the exact term,” Bobbi said rolling her already empty glass in her hands. “He’s like you said, Thor, desire caring not for form. He’s not attracted or turned off by gender; he’s attracted to warriors.”

“Nah. He likes people who don’t need him to protect them,” Sam said. He was calm, thoughtful, but audibly very sure of himself. “He likes people who don’t NEED him around but WANT him around. Huh. Pansexual is the term, I think.”

“Right, yeah, that’s it,” Bobbi blinked at him, a little owlish. “He’s got a high sex drive and so do I—so when I came around I was the missing puzzle piece. Social invisibility and sufficient booty calls.”

“He shouldn’t have to…hide who he is though. I’m real sorry he thought he had to do that,” Bruce said, softly. 

Bobbi flailed a hand in his direction. “S’okay. Just don’t joke with him about it for a bit. He’ll be sensitive and keyed up.”

“Great, so who wants in on the ‘First Person Clint Punches In the Face Over This’ pool?” Tony said briskly. “I have fifty bucks on Steve.”

No one would take his bet.

*****

Several floors down, in the gym, Steve Rogers was punching a heavy bag. It was one of the new ones Tony had put in, with the reactive memory polymer on it. It was more durable than any fabric and could absorb punches from both Thor barehanded and Bucky’s metal fist. 

Each impact of knuckle on surface slashed a memory into him.

_”Hey, faggot. Rogers, you fairy, where you goin’? Your buddy Barnes need his cock sucked?”_

_Steve didn’t turned around, or quicken his pace. Frankly, he couldn’t walk faster; he was a day off an asthma attack so bad he’d stopped breathing entirely twice. He could remember, distantly, Bucky’s voice pleading with him to breathe. Louder even than his mom’s._

_He just need to get one block over, where there were open shops. The shopkeepers around here loved Steve — he hand lettered their signs, did little drawings for patrons who couldn’t read, helped sweep up and clean in exchange for produce that was going off. They were mostly Jewish and Italian and Irish._

_The rush of running feet caught him off guard, the ringing in his ears louder than usual. He was hauled off his feet, hurled into a nearby alley to sprawl with bruising force on the bricks._

_“Guys, come on. Just leave it,” he said, dragging himself up. “Just … can we do this at school or somethin’?”_

_He looked up from his knees, facing off at four boys about his age, fifteen or so. Three of them he didn’t even know enough to name them but The leader was ‘Butch’ Cavenough and he was just plain mean._

_“Nah, Rogers. We’re doin’ this now, where you don’t got your boyfriend to protect you.” Cavenough sneered._

_“He’s not my—” Steve’s words were interrupted with a slap that threw him into a wall, drawing blood. Before he could get up he was grabbed by the hair and dragged back to his knees, in front of Cavenough who was undoing his belt…_

“Hey, punk,” Bucky said from behind him.

“How mad is Clint?’ Steve responded, still punching.

“Mad? Not so much.”

Steve sighed and stopped moving, leaning his forehead on the bag. “Yeah, okay. I know. I’ll apologize to him when I think it won’t end in extreme violence.”

“Don’t really care; Barton’s got a support team on him. _You_ okay?”

Steve turned around and stared at his oldest friend who … wasn’t the man he’d grown up with. He looked the same. Sometimes he even talked the same but this was a different…creature. Even after months Steve didn’t have a real handle on just who that was behind James Buchanan Barnes’ eyes any more. “I just…remembered that alley. That time. When Cavenough almost…”

“Yeah, I know. I figured. You _okay_?”

“I’m going to have to be. I mean, I know…things are so much better now. Not great, not even enough really but I see men holding hands with other men, two women building lives together and all I think is I’m so damn GLAD we got even this far but …”

“It’s different when it’s a guy you’ve lived with.”

Steve shook his head. “No, not that. I don’t care if Clint was … looking or anything. Bobbi looks. Nat looks. It’s the same and it means nothing. I’m sick cause Clint LIED. He HID it. Why would he think he had to—”

“Cause he thought you’d lose respect for him, Steve. Cause he thought you’d — everyone — would judge him.”

“Well,” Steve said mulishly, “he shouldn’t have thought that.”

“You blame him?”

“No. Buck. I want to know…how do you feel about—?”

“Barton liking men. Honestly, I don’t know what I feel.” Bucky made a frustrated gesture. “I remember what I felt about it when we were kids, right? I remember all that…fear and nervousness and I remember thinking that I hated the way the other guys talked about it but … now? I honestly don’t know how I feel about it, cause _Hydra never bothered to put that part of my brain back together_. Best I can say is…I can’t figure out why anyone would CARE. Long as no one was hurtin’ anybody.”

“You remember that day — with Cavenough — though.”

“Yeah, Steve. They always let me keep the _bad_ memories.”

The sheer bleak emptiness of Bucky’s voice stopped Steve’s heart. The two men stared at each other, from several feet and eighty years away. 

Bucky moved first, crossing the distance and resting his hand on Steve’s shoulder. “Let it go right now. You owe Barton an apology, the TEAM an apology but they’ll wait for it. Figure out where you are in your head before you try to deliver it.”

Steve sighed and nodded, turned back to the bag. 

JARVIS interrupted.

“Captain Rogers, Sergeant Barnes you may wish to attend the main lobby. The NYPD seems to be trying to arrest Lord Plunder.”


	4. Crime Scenes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who or what is hunting in Hells Kitchen?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AO3 WON A HUGO FOLKS! 
> 
> GO TRANSFORMATIVE FANDOM!

Bucky and Steve hit the lobby to see Shanna, Ka-Zar and Zabu facing off against three NYPD patrol people with their hands on their guns and two other people in uniforms Steve didn’t instantly recognize. There was a lot of shouting.

Steve stopped dead and invoked Captain America. “Quiet! Everyone!” And everyone — even the saber toothed tiger — went quiet.

Into that quiet the other elevator opened, disgorging Bobbi, who caromed off the door twice before it fully opened, followed by Bruce, Tony and Thor. Bobbi hurled herself between the three Savage Land inhabitants and the armed officers.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she bawled into the silence of the lobby. 

“Doctor Barton!” exclaimed the man in the unfamiliar uniform before he were cut off by the other. That person, a dark-haired androgynous figure, moved to stand in front of Bobbi.

“What we are doing, Doctor Barton, is taking a dangerous unregistered wild animal into custody,” they said crisply.

Zabu. They were after Zabu, not Ka-Zar.

“Fucking paperwork, Rickards,” Bobbi snapped, holding out her hand. There was just the edge of a slur on her words, probably not even detectable to anyone who didn’t know her intimately. 

“Is she drunk?” Bucky asked Tony in a low voice.

“Probably.”

Bobbi was speed reading the paper work she’d been handed, waving off both Ka-Zar and Shanna in the process. Steve was struck by how much he disregarded her at this point in his life. By how much he took for granted her ability to absorb information like a sponge and make decisions in nano-seconds. How much they would all have paid in blood without those things. 

When she was done she handed it back to Rickards with a blank cold expression and turned to Ka-Zar and Shanna. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” they both answered at the same time.

She looked over their shoulders, past Steve and Bucky, past Tony and Bruce. She nodded, her face alive with anxiety now that the law enforcement people couldn’t see her. 

Thor gently shouldered his teammates out of the way.

“Lord and Lady Plunder, Friend Zabu, be welcome in my home. I invite thee to guest in Asgard.”

Bobbi burst into a radiant smile, turning to stare down the two … animal control officers. 

“That was not fair, Doctor Barton,” snapped Rickards, their face tense and angry.

“What just happened?” Asked the lead NYPD patrolperson.

“Avengers Tower is the Asgardian Embassy on Earth. Thor Odinson, Prince of Asgard, just took the Plunders and Zabu as house guests. As they are no longer on American soil, you have no jurisdiction here,” Bobbi announced. 

Tony Stark burst into nearly hysterical laughter. “I love my friends!”

Bobbi turned back to Zabu and the Plunders. “I know you need to get out but please just go back to the common floor until we sort this out. I’ll figure out what the issue is, I swear.”

After they left, with Thor, Steve moved to join Bobbi with the disgruntled officers. 

“How do you know each other?’ He asked his team mate, looking at animal control as he did.

“Reed and I are the only xenobiologists in the city who will talk to the cops these days,” Bobbi said rather brutally. All five of the peace officers winced. “And I only do it because when the Guardians dropped us off, Rickards there almost shot Rocket.”

‘We have to challenge all raccoons now,” Rickards said in a sour voice. “Ask them if they are from Earth or not.”

Steve cocked his head. “When was that?”

“The night Sam and Clint and Nat and I took him out for pizza,” said Bobbi. She turned to the officers again. “Please tell us why you were coming to try and take a saber toothed tiger into custody?”

“They didn’t tell us that bit,” muttered the lead cop.

Rickard set their shoulders square. “Doctor Barton, there were two deaths last night in Hell’s Kitchen and it appears the animal was responsible—”

“He’s not an animal,” Bobbi interrupted. “Zabu is sentient: self-aware, understands language, can reason, feels pain. He’s not a giant house cat. He’s Lord Plunder’s foster father.”

There was an audible hum from the other Avengers as they each filed that info away. 

“That’s as may be but we think it…he murdered two people!” Rickards finally snapped. 

Bobbi pursed her lips. “Take me to the scene. No, take us.” And she turned, snagged Bruce Banner by the lapel and dragged him forward.

In a plaintive voice, Bruce asked “Why exactly is this my problem now?”

“You’re the closest thing I have to biology back up around here,” answered Bobbi.

Bruce subsided, still grumbling a little, but with a flattered look in his eyes. 

Steve eyed them both, then nodded. “If whatever happened made someone think ‘saber toothed tiger’ when they saw it, yes, we should check it out. But you’re not driving anywhere, Bobbi.”

“Yeah, yeah. Rickards and Tsui will drive us.”

“Sure, yes, whatever! I’ll pick up your dry cleaning too, shall I?” Rickards said, throwing their hands in the air.

“We do that in house,” said Tony smoothly. Bobbi looked at him and made a gesture, indicating ‘pocket’ fairly clearly. Tony blinked for a second, then his eyes lit up and he nodded. Reaching down he produced a flat piece of metal, which he threw to Bobbi. She tucked it away and smiled gratefully. 

With that, Bobbi and Bruce left with all the officers, Tony wandered off to probably his lab, Bucky said “gym” and left—

—leaving Steve Rogers standing in the empty private lobby of Avengers tower wondering just how badly he’d screwed up today. 

*****

Bobbi and Bruce had stared in silence at the scene for so long that Rickards, Tsui and the beat cops had all retreated to the end of the alley. Detective Mahoney stuck around though, watching the two Avengers more than he looked at the crime scene.

“Lemme see the body photos again, please, Detective,” Bobbi said eventually. Mahoney handed her the police issued StarkTab that held the initial photographs — the bodies, what was left of them, were at the morgue by now. The lingering stench of decay and death mixed with the garbage and green waste of the alley. No one had yet cleaned up the blood, which was everywhere. 

Bobbi turned the tablet towards Bruce and pointed over it to the wall behind them. “Arterial?”

“I’m not the expert here but yes, I think so.” Bruce wandered to where he could see the last positions of both bodies, his eyes tracking slowly over the area side to side. 

“You do blood splatter analysis, Mockingbird?” Said Mahoney, taking back the tablet.

“No, I’ve cut a few throats in my time,” Bobbi responded absently. She coughed a little, getting Bruce’s attention, then showed him something she’d palmed from her pocket. Bruce sighed and raised an eyebrow, then gently took Mahoney by the arm and turned him towards the end of the alley, as though they were looking at the tablet together.

“What are you doing?” Mahoney asked.

“Presenting you with plausible deniability,” Bruce responded.

Behind him, Mahoney heard a whining noise, very high and soft, then saw a flash of light, like a photocopier scanning the whole alley. As Bruce turned them back towards Mockingbird he could have sworn he saw her left hand covered in what looked like one of Iron Man’s gloves. 

Mahoney sighed and rolled his eyes. “You damn costumed assholes and your secrecy. I suppose now you’re going to tell me the cat didn’t do anything?”

Bobbi nodded. “Zabu didn’t do this, Mahoney. For starters he doesn’t eat humans but…everything is wrong. The size of the bites, the markings the claws made on that freezer, all too small to be him. Also, he doesn’t make vertical climbs up buildings—”

“Sorry, what?”

In surprise, Bobbi gestured at the brick wall opposite the back door of the restaurant. Bruce looked up and blinked, then nodded suddenly. Mahoney was still staring.

Bobbi walked over and touched a spot on the wall, pointing up. “Whatever killed those people, it jumped to three feet above my hand and then climbed straight up that wall. Used its claws as pitons. See. There and there and all the way up.”

Mahoney stared some more, moved a little closer to the wall…and cursed. “How did we miss that?”

“Most perps don’t vertical leap nine feet and climb brick to escape.”

The look Mahoney gave her was withering. “In New York they do.”

“Well, given that I threw you a new clue, can we go see the bodies?”

Mahoney narrowed his eyes at her, then nodded. “I’ll call the medical examiner.”

*****

Bobbi and Bruce, both a little white faced, retrieved their ID from the desk guard at the morgue and exited out into the New York evening. 

“I’m not coming along to one of these again,” Bruce said quite firmly. 

“Understood, that was … harrowing,” Bobbi looked around. “Want me to call you a StarkCab?”

“What are you doing?”

“I feel like walking.”

“I’ll walk with you.”

They walked in silence, both of them processing, brooding really, about what they had just seen. Instinctively , they avoided major streets. About half way back to the Tower Bobbi suddenly touched Bruce’s arm.

“I’ll join you on the next block,” she said softly, then was gone, clambering up a fire escape that she had to jump six feet to get too. Bruce looked up at the roof of the building and saw a flash of deep red.

On the roof, Bobbi nodded at the man stepping back from the edge, more into the shadows. 

“Hey, double D.”

Daredevil cocked his head at her. “I heard you at the crime scene. You and Bruce.”

“I figured you would, we were pretty close to…an office,” Bobbi said.

“I heard…I also heard the murders, last night,” Daredevil blurted out. 

“I figured that too.”

“I heard…something that wasn’t human, smelt it too, when I got there. Musk and … I have no idea, I’m not a biologist.”

“I am, thankfully, and I had this down there.” Bobbi raised her left hand as the nano gauntlet she’d borrowed from Stark materialized from the bracelet on her wrist. “It’ll have pulled an latent chemicals from the air so we can test them later. But what’d you hear?”

“Growling. Hissing. The sound of blood hitting the brick. Bodies hitting the ground. Chewing. I heard it climb the wall. And then it was gone. Before I could get there, Bobbi, it was gone.”

“Shit,” she said, actually shocked. “It moved that fast?”

“It moved that fast … and something took it off the roof. No more blood scent. It just…stops.” 

“Huh.”

“Keep me up to date, Bobbi. No one hunts in Hell’s Kitchen without answering to me.” With those words, whispered in a fiercely protective undertone, Daredevil was gone, leaping into the night. 

Bobbi herself jumped off the roof of the four story building almost absently, landing softly next to Bruce as he passed under flickering street lamp. 

He started, then glared at her. “We need to get that data back to our lab. I know you’re convinced it wasn’t Zabu but I want whatever it was off the streets.”

“Agreed.”

They quickened their pace, headed for the shining “A”.

*****

In Central Park, the Hunter was growing agitated. 

Master had not come, not when he promised. 

Master had not come, and she had not fed and she was growing hungry. She could not reach her ordered prey, locked up in that tower of glass and metal and human weapons. She could not leave the shadows of the trees. And she could not bear the smell of the small animals that roamed the canopy with her, not even long enough to eat one.

Lifting her nose to the wind, tail lashing, she scented something else that would make a far better meal.

The Hunter spun and headed towards her new prey.


	5. Suspects

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi and Bruce get back to the Tower.
> 
> Steve is a little lost.

The shooting range at the Tower was one floor off the armoury. Steve found himself on that floor without really planning it, staring at the personalized ranks of weapons racks that took up the secure room.

Tony, being Tony, had made the whole room modular and expandable. Not that they’d expected to add anyone to the team when it was formed but just in case. Bobbi’s rack was between Sam’s and Bucky’s. Hawkeye’s was next to Black Widow.

His ‘second best’ bow was missing—not the extendable, foldable combat bow but one he used almost exclusively for target shooting. He, like all of them, kept his combat weapons on his floor. They each had small, personal armouries. Steve kept his combat costume and shield in his. 

Still without really thinking about it, Steve took the private staircase to the range. 

The sound he heard from the atrium was a nearly steady, bee-like hum of arrows flying. He took a deep breath and started to round the corner of the baffle wall when a voice spoke over the sound of archery.

“You seriously just gonna do that till you bleed?” Sam asked, sounding exasperated.

“Why change a totally self-destructive habit Sam?” Natasha answered. “I mean if it’s been how you refuse to cope with your emotions your whole adult life, don’t ruin a good thing.”

“Bite me, Nat,” Clint responded, without rancour. 

“Other than the ‘till your fingers bleed’ part it probably is a good way to cope,” Same responded, thoughtfully. Clint made a crowing nose.

“Bobbi gets it and she’s the only one who has a say on what I do with my hands,” the archer pointed out. The sound of shooting stopped, there was a clinking noise Steve assumed was Clint moving a new batch of arrows into that side holster he used when he was just target shooting. “Where’d she go, anyway?”

“Officers showed up to arrest Ka-Zar, she went down to deal with it,” Natasha said. “It sounds like it will be a good story anyway.”

“Maybe you should go help her and leave me the hell alone then,” Clint suggested in a slightly dangerous voice. The sound of arrows resumed. 

“It doesn’t bother you that she didn’t come to see you?” Sam asked.

The shooting noise stopped again.

“She respects me enough to leave me alone when I want to be alone,” Clint said in a pointed tone. 

“Then answer my original question and I’ll leave,” Sam responded. 

“I’m not committing to anything,” said Nat.

Arrow noises started up again and this time when Clint spoke it was in that calm, measured tone he got when he was letting his hands go onto autopilot with the bow. “I’m not mad at Steve. I accept what Bucky said is true. I’m not mad…but that really, really hurt and I’m not going to pretend it didn’t. So I’m not mad but he better fucking apologize or I AM gonna get mad.”

Steve silently retreated back up the stairs, wishing that either Sharon was on the continent rather than in Australia or that he could get drunk. 

He checked in with Thor and Ka-Zar and Shanna—Zabu was out on the patio pacing. The entire duck family was riding on his back and they seemed to be comforting him. Spending time chatting with the humans he came away sensing both that they were insanely frustrated and content to trust Bobbi would take care of it. 

Whatever it was. 

In time he found himself on the lab level, to find Stark in the shared space, playing with weapon schematics on the holographic projector. Steve wandered in, caught a look from Tony that indicated he was welcome and slowly drifted into leaning on a counter at the edge of the space, just watching Tony work.

He felt like Zabu with the ducks, being slowly comforted and calmed by the dark, energetic man’s deft precision, his expertise, his relaxed perfectionism. 

“You wanna talk about it?” Tony suddenly said after what might have been hours of silence, dry and low, almost in an undertone. 

Steve started, not expecting the question.

“Not…not really,” he said. “But I guess I should.”

“Nah. I mean you should but not to me. Talking to me about this stuff is lunacy. I’ll just recommend you drink too much and pick a fight with…well, you, actually.”

“That explains a lot of our interactions,” Steve said. 

They shared a look, the patriarchs of the Avengers, that spoke volumes about their relationship. 

They were the two magnetic poles of the team, both with their own authority, their own gravity. Tony was the master of the money, the toys, the logistics that kept them all running. Steve was the moral North Star, the ethical balance point and the unquestioned battle leader. They fought and snarled and disagreed and yelled at each other nearly every week.

There was probably no human on the planet each respected and relied on more than the other. 

Suddenly there was a ‘message recieved’ chime and Jarvis spoke. 

“Mr Stark, Doctors Banner and Barton are back in the building and Doctor Barton advises they need the holographic simulation to, and I quote, ‘figure out this fucking double murder’.”

The AI seemed, as always, to put a little flourish on the obscenities. The entire team was convinced he loved being able to swear with ‘permission’. 

Tony swiped his files closed, reset the projectors and retreated to stand next to Steve, muttering, “This should be fun.”

Bobbi came into the room in an explosion of not entirely pleasant energy. Her jacket went flying, followed by the nano-gauntlet Tony had lent her; the first to a chair and the second into his hand. He tucked it away, Jarvis having already emptied it of its data. Bruce slunk in behind her more tentatively, looking a little green around the gills. 

Without greeting either man, Bobbi started sketching in the wireframe details of an alley, the back door of a business and two mutilated corpses.

As she moved and waved her hands and muttered details fleshed out — or rather flesh and blooded out because there was a lot of blood and a certain amount of flesh that wasn’t strictly attached to its original body anymore. 

When she came to rest it was in the centre of carnage that seemed frenzied just from the static, not entirely realistic images on the holographic grid. 

Tony pushed away from the counter and went to join her, staring around in awe. He was replaced by Bruce, who immediately took off his glasses and started polishing them. 

Steve watched, mute and worried. 

“Jarvis from the data in the alley, the claw marks on the wall and the wounds on the bodies can you give me a wire frame of the approximate height and weight of the attacker?” Bobbi said, her voice tight and tense. 

The figure that appeared was maybe an inch taller than Bobbi. It was nothing but a stick figure, but it had teeth and claws. 

“I have extrapolated the approximate length and density of the attackers weapons as well, Doctor Barton,” Jarvis intoned. 

“That sure doesn’t look like the Smilodon up on the deck,” Tony said.

Bobbit threw him a glance. “You looked that up, didn’t you?”

“Like you wouldn’t.”

“I know it wasn’t Zabu, the issue is proving it,” Bobbi said tightly. She was moving in abrupt spurts, utterly unlike her usual self, almost jerky. She nearly hit Tony with a gesturing arm.

“Calm down there, will you?’ Tony said in a mildly irritated voice.

“I’ll fucking calm down when this isn’t all my fucking fault,” Bobbi snarled, rounding on him so aggressively he recoiled. 

Steve pushed off from the counter. “Bobbi.” He snapped and she froze in place. “I know you’re upset but you don’t get to be abusive to any of us over it.” It was his ‘Captain America’ voice: the voice of a human man who could command a god. 

There was a pause like a deep, exhaled breath.

Bobbi looked down, then back up and nodded. “Yes. Sorry. Long day. Worried about Clint. Worried about Zabu. Worried about, um, you. All my fault I should have known—” she staggered a little, hand to her head. “I should have known. I did know. I should have figured it out—” Her mouth was trembling and the clipped speech patterns were a bad sign. She did that when she was trying not to stutter. 

“Have you eaten anything today?” Bruce asked suddenly.

“I…I…don’t remember.”

“That means no.”

Steve sighed. “You all keep working, I’m going to the kitchen to get you food. Not a ration bar, a meal. We’ll eat together, in fact.” He exited into the hallway.

“Hang on,” Bruce said, following him. “Lemme show you something.” 

Behind them, Tony and Bobbi started back up with their ‘science muttering’ — decidedly more calm and collaborative. Bruce lead Steve around a corner that he thought lead to a storage closet to discover it was now a compact but beautifully laid out galley kitchen.

“When did this happen?” Steve asked, opening the freezer and sorting through the pre-packaged meals there. Somehow he was utterly unsurprised that even this little space he hadn’t even known about was set up for himself, Bucky and Thor — lots of high calorie, easy to grab and go food. Neatly labeled with dates in Bobbi’s small, precise writing. He closed his eyes a moment, slightly overcome at the _care_ that indicated. 

“Right after she — when it was really bad, Tony didn’t want her to have any excuses not to eat. Even ‘oh, I didn’t want to leave my experiments’. I think he mighta put it in himself by hand, over a weekend.” Bruce said softly, assembling glasses and a few bottles of sparkling water on a tray. 

Steve looked up, two ‘breakfast burritos’ and a tray of Bobbi’s Special Mac’n’Cheese in his hands. “That was … that was well done of him.” He squinted, knowing he had a pained look on his face. “Why didn’t he say anything?”

“It’s Tony,” Bruce said with a shrug. “He thinks talking about actually nice things he does makes them mean less. Words are cheap for him; deeds matter.”

Steve straightened and sighed, nodding. He quickly cut the burritos in half — his super solider muscles making short work of even the rock hard frozen food — and stuck the whole lot into the flash convection “not a microwave” oven that was a standard kitchen appliance for the Tower. 

In less than five minutes he and Bruce were headed back to the lab, where Bobbi and Tony had fleshed out the killer figure into someone tall and lean, with vicious slashing claws and prominent canine fangs. Faceless, but lethal.

Steve and Bruce laid out the food and drink and they all sat down. Bobbi picked at her share until she looked up to see all three men staring at her, pointedly not eating themselves. 

“Stop it, I’m a grown woman,” she muttered at them.

“So, eat then, how you gonna get a husband, you don’t eat?” Bruce responded, repeating one of her lines that had become standard banter in the Tower. They all laughed, the tension in the air finally dissipated and Bobbi started eating in earnest. 

She had positioned herself where she could see the simulation and she didn’t join in on the conversation the men were having. She just stared, with that teeth-grinding concentration she had sometimes. 

When they finished and cleaned up, they all wound up staring at the simulation together. 

“Is this admissible in court?” Steve asked.

“Pepper’s working on it,” said Tony. 

Bobbi looked over at him and opened her mouth—

The ‘critical alert’ noise went off before she could speak and the next second they were all out of the lab, in the express elevator and headed to the armoury.

“Jarvis, what’s going on?” Steve yelled as the doors popped open. The entire rest of the team were already there. Clint very pointedly was not looking at the elevator.

“Captain, the NYPD are receiving multiple 911 calls about a tiger attacking the livestock at Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park.”

“And why the hell is that our problem?” Sam snapped, pausing as he secured his flight rig.

“Because this tiger apparently can stand on its back legs, like a human.”


	6. Not-For-Children Zoo Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers confront the Hunter at the Tisch Children’s Zoo in Central Park.

They could hear the bellowing of the cattle as soon as the doors of quinjet opened. Falcon, Iron Man and Thor took to the sky; the ground fighters sprayed out, each finding their own path. They’d had to land near the goat area and had a few hundred meters to run. 

Hawkeye made a bee line for the Acorn Theater, as the highest ground with the widest field view but that wasn’t saying much. The zoo was thickly treed and the shadows were equally as thick. The three HUD wearing Avengers were onto their usual call and response on what they could see but the trees messed up Falcon and Iron Man’s FLIR.

Mockingbird could see more, barrelling down the center of the main path flanked by Cap and the Winter Soldier. Black Widow was running the tree line somewhere to their right. 

“Whatever it is it’s fast, so fast the heat sensors don’t so much perceive where it is as where it _just was_. Damn!” She exclaimed. 

“What?” Snapped Captain America.

“It just killed one of the zebu,” she responded. What she didn’t say was that it—whatever it was—had struck from nowhere, like a shark emerging from dark water and slashed the animals’ throat with a single strike. Her infrared overlay actually registered the spray of hot blood.

Like the blood that had sprayed in the alley. 

Bruce was waiting at the jet. This was not a battle that suited the Hulk. He was monitoring the three HUD feeds—a bit slower than she, Iron Man or Falcon managed—but often he would catch patterns and details on those replays they didn’t see the first time. She knew he would have seen that spray, bright green against black. 

The hazy heatform of the attacker was bent over the dying animal’s neck. Suddenly it jerked up, paused for a moment — and then was gone.

“Okay, it’s one person…or something,” Mockingbird yelled. “I think it was feeding on the animal but it heard us. It’s gone, under the trees or something, somewhere the limited sensors on the tac goggles can’t pick it up. It’s _very very fast_ — not a speedster but faster than any of us.”

“Not faster than an arrow,” Hawkeye responded, noticeably aggressive and irritable. 

The three running the main path fetched up against the fenced area that held the big cattle. The metallic reek of fresh blood washed over them and the bellowing of the rest of the animals was frantic.

“Surprised it didn’t go for the one and only cow in Manhattan,” Winter Solider muttered.

“It’s not…not an it,” Mockingbird said, her head on a swivel. “An animal would have stayed to defend its kill. This…person…fled when we approached but—Iron Man, Falcon, Thor, Bruce spot anyone covered in zebu blood running away from the zoo just now?”

The responses were all negative. 

“So, whomever or whatever this is, it’s still here,” said Captain America firmly. “Widow, you see anything?”

“No,” Black Widow said through their earpieces, her voice very low and very soft. “I’m opposite the birdbrain there, watching.”

Hawkeye snorted over the coms. “Nothing moving in that pen but that group of really agitated…cow-things over in the corner, under Widow’s tree.”

“Zebu,” Mockingbird responded absently. “Humped South Asian cattle.”

“I wasn’t planning on adopting one, Mocky,” he responded. 

The idle banter was normal and most of the team admitted they found it soothing. 

Captain America had tried to out law it three times. Never took. 

He made a frustrated noise now and unshipped his shield, pulling it into combat position on his arm. The Winter Soldier was the second point of the little triangle the three of them had made when they reached that open ground, hand gun out. Mockingbird was the third point, facing towards the milling, still bellowing cattle at the far end of the pen. Her batons were in her hands, but down, tapping against her legs.

“I can’t see anything moving down there but the cattle and the three of you,” Falcon interjected, swooping low over them and careening away. Thor landed somewhere behind them, the solid thud of his weight into concrete unmistakable. Iron Man hovered, repulsors flaring, scanning the area.

“Just the three of you and the herd,” he said. “Nothing else registering.”

Mockingbird’s hands went still. The Winter Soldier said into the quiet, “Cap, you hear that?”

“Widow, get out of that tree!” Mockingbird screamed. She never knew what had triggered her cry, just a mixed up, confused collection of impressions and probabilities. But as she cried out a form that seemed all shadow and violence erupted out of the herd of cattle and launched itself directly at where Black Widow was perched. 

Widow hurled herself in a vertical dive out over the cattle, into the center of the open space, landing hard but rolling with it. Even in the dim moonlight, everyone could see the four parallel scratches down the thigh of her body suit. The lighter color of the super kevlar underneath was exposed but no blood. 

The other three joined her, watching her pat herself quickly. “Didn’t penetrate,” she said, rising. Whatever had attacked her was in the trees now, audibly growling. 

“Could you see anything?” Captain America asked. 

“Teeth and stripes; the claws I felt.” She touched the rips in her suit. “This is nearly through both layers on one hit.”

“Two, maybe three, strikes to get through to the creamy filling in Iron Man’s suit then,” Falcon said from above. 

“Probably only Mjolnir and the shield can stand up to it,” Bruce offered. 

“You were right, that’s no animal,” Captain America said to Mockingbird. “They used the cattle for sensory cover.”

The growling stopped and suddenly the air was alive with arrows. Hawkeye didn’t wear a HUD because his vision was _better_ than any sensors they had. He stitched a line from directly parallel the little group to the far end of the enclosure. On the last shot there came a wild, pain-filled yowl, like a house-cat whos tailed been stepped on but louder, deeper. 

“Yeah, I hit’em but it was a glance. Won’t slow’em down much if at all,” he said sourly when the sound died away. “It’s just a blur even for me. But it’s a blur with a long tail.” 

“Falcon, Iron Man stay up and do a constant perimeter sweep. I don’t want who ever this is getting away. Thor, come and join us. Bruce stay on coms and sensors; Hawkeye, yell if you spot motion. Mockingbird, scan, now,” Captain America issued his orders with brisk efficiency. All of them — three geniuses, a soldier, a former black ops specialist and a god of noble blood — hopped to obey. 

Mockingbird swept the grounds and shook her head. “Too many trees, blocking too much, for me. Iron Man?”

“I think…I think I have motion, yeah. Like you said it looks more like a ‘heat-echo’ than a reading, like they won’t stay still long enough to warm the air.”

One of his targeting lasers painted out the middle section of the big clump of trees against the wall of the enclosure. The little group in open all turned that way, shaking out into their usual battle line: Cap and Thor in the center, Winter Soldier and Mock on each end, Black Widow roaming behind. It was like a mini ‘bull horn’ formation — smash any frontal attack into the two immovable objects while the mobile skirmishers closed in each side. Falcon and Iron Man served to watched everyone’s backs.

“Thor,” Captain America said, “Can you … singe them a little?”

Thor snorted, raised his hammer and called a single, thin bolt of lightening from the cloudless sky. It struck into the center of the trees, lighting one on fire.

And everything went insane.

The zebu at the far end of the pen screamed as one and stampeded, thankfully away from the burning tree which put them behind the Avengers — but also cut off any ground retreat for a moment.

Their scream was echoed by what ever was in the tree line and something leapt towards them. They all had a confused impression of orange and black stripes, a long thrashing tail, glowing green eyes and…the teeth and claws of a predator.

Hawkeye shot another flight of arrows — which missed, slashing the air around their attacker like he was trying to frame them against a board. 

Something in Mockingbird’s head grabbed and held that image as ‘important but now isn’t the time’ as she, Winter Soldier and Black Widow all surged forward to curve around. It required no thought to see their attacker was about to land in the open in front of them.

As the blur landed before Cap and Thor it was full in the dim silver light of the moon for the first time.

It—she—was breathtakingly beautiful. She had the body of a powerful human athlete who worked hard, like Mockingbird and Black Widow. Sleek muscle and strong limbs … both covered with what looked like the orange and black fur of a tiger. Her hair was a wild orange mane half way down her back, her eyes glowed green in the poor lighting and her claws and teeth looked sharp enough to rend adamantium. 

Some of that realization would come later, reviewing footage from the HUD’s and security cameras. As it stood no one had time to admire her much. The instant after she landed she was in the air again, a Tasmanian Devil worthy blur of teeth, claws and fur.

Sparks flew as she launched herself at Thor and Cap, who both backed as far as they could before trampling on cattle and then stood their ground. Neither could attack as they were too occupied fending off the snarling tiger-woman before them. Neither of the fliers could safely shoot, ditto for the three on the ground. 

The only person who got off a shot was Hawkeye and it did hit, carving a bloody line down one arm as it was raised to slash at Thor’s face — but it also almost skewered Mockingbird. Her batons being in the right position to fend it away, purely by accident, was the only reason she wasn’t hit too. 

They all heard the archer’s annoyed yell through their earpieces and the air as he jumped off his high ground and hurtled closer to the battle. 

The tiger-woman flipped end over end and as she did a rending kick with her back legs took Thor’s breast plate right off, launching it up over his face, blinding him a second. Captain America got down between them, the enamel paint of his shield chipping off in a spray as she raked her front claws up the face on her return strike. 

Without planning it Mockingbird and Black Widow simply threw themselves forward, low and high, in two identical spinning twists. The tiger-woman had to flip up into the air to avoid them and landed in the open — or what looked like the open.

The Winter Solider was behind her, coming out of a shadow with very little of Bucky in his ice blue eyes, gun up and ready, pointed at her head. He pulled the trigger. It was a kill shot.

She dodged it, dodged a bullet at maybe three feet, her whole body spinning and contracting around itself. She went down, came up … and this time an Avenger was bleeding as she struck with one foot and then one hand in the same spot, the first blow rending through the Winter Soldier’s tac suit and the second the flesh of his thigh. 

He was fast enough, and his suit strong enough, that it was only a glancing blow but the blood on the tiger-woman’s face fur was very clear, black in the silver moonlight. He fell sideways, onto one knee. 

She landed in a feral crouch a few feet away, shaking her head like a cat with something stuck to its whiskers. She made a noise, half-growl, half-distressed yowl … and leapt into the air.

Not towards the Avengers, or the cattle, but into the trees and then — silhouetted for a moment against the lights of the city — over the wall. Falcon and Iron Man followed instantly, both peppering bullets and repulsor fire at the fleeing figure.

No one left behind thought for one second they’d hit her. 

The ground fighters, now joined by Hawkeye who’d just ‘log jammed’ over the backs of the milling cattle. Grouped together, Cap barked out orders. 

“She’s headed towards the Mall, Mockingbird, Hawkeye, go with Thor he’ll fly you to the far end, and start tracking back. I’ll get Iron Man to go high and scan, Bruce can watch this area and Falcon can sweep the perimeter. Widow, Buck, you’re with me.”

“Bandage that leg, James, or you’ll be leaving a blood trail,” Widow said absently.

“It’ll heal over in a second,” he responded, irritably checking his gun.

“No more head shots, Bucky,” Captain America snapped at him. “We don’t kill.”

“Yeah, yeah, it was reflex. Don’t think I’d have hit her anyway, never seen anything but a speedster move that fast,” the Winter Solider said, anger and frustration in his voice. He patted at his leg, as though the wipe away the still flowing blood.

Mockingbird, just reaching up her arms towards Thor, paused. Her face — which the Asgardian and Hawkeye could see — went very blank and very still.

Then in one smooth motion she snatched two arrows from Hawkeye’s back quiver, spun and plunged both of them into the Winter Soldier’s chest.

They activated, both taser heads going off at the same time.

And the Winter Solider collapsed onto his back, eyes wide and staring.

Mockingbird had just stopped his heart.


	7. Blood Bag

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why did Mockingbird stop the Winter Soldier’s heart last chapter?

Mockingbird dove onto the Winter soldier’s prone form, hauling him into a sitting position while screaming a hurricane of instructions into the comms.

“Falcon, Iron Man get back here...Bruce grab the field surgery kit and run to that building to the north west of the quinjet...Thor come here and grab him, I need you to fly him over to that building...and keep his head up above that wound. Rest of you follow me, sprint! We have maybe eight minutes here.”

Thor picked up the super soldier like he was a child, head draped over his shoulder and with a swing of his hammer was gone. Mockingbird’s face, illuminated by the moon and the sullenly burning tree was still cold as ice above her mobile mouth. 

“Iron Man, put out that fire and then join us at the building. Falcon, you head there too. Jarvis, which of the exterior rooms is the vet clinic?”

That last she yelled as she sprinted into the darkness, down the path towards the quinjet. Hawkeye loped behind her, at her heels like a hunting dog. 

Black Widow and Captain America, stared at each other for a long moment in shock, then both jumped about three feet when Iron Man swooped over head and discharged his extinguishers on the tree before heading north west. 

They ran after him, looping around the quinjet to the large concrete building where the rest of the team had gathered. As they sprinted up they saw Hawkeye point to a gated enclosure, Mockingbird nod, and then the archer promptly kicked the flimsy padlock off with one strike.

The rest piled in behind him and as Captain America and Black Widow arrived, Iron Man was unlocking a keypad on the wall, allowing a wide door to swing open onto a room that gleamed with stainless steel.

Bruce, carrying the big medical case from the quinjet, slipped inside, followed by Thor (he had to duck) carrying Bucky. Lights inside the room flickered and warmed up. Through the door they could see a wide metal table and medical devices in strange, unusually large shapes. 

Mockingbird was talking fast to Falcon, who was nodding.

“...the back storage room on the medical level, it’s restricted access, Jarvis will unlock it for you. Go to whatever refridge unit he opens and grab every plasma bag off the middle shelf. Check they’re marked ‘WS’ and get them all back here, pronto. Go, go!” 

Falcon unshipped his wings and took off straight up like a rocket. 

Iron Man lumbered through the door, which then emitted Thor. The big Asgardian looked at Mockingbird who nodded.

“You and Hawkeye?” She turned and looked back at Captain America and Black Widow, her brother and sister in all but blood. Her eyes were dead. “Keep them the fuck out of this room.”

*****

Bobbi slammed the door shut and heard it lock — which would mean nothing to the edge of a vibranium shield in the hands of a super soldier. 

She turned back to the room. The Iron Man suit was holding up Bucky like a broken marionette, raised several off the ground. The medical kit was already open on the gurney next to the suit. Tony and Bruce were staring at her in confusion and not a small amount of fear. 

“Why do they have to stay out?” Bruce asked, his hands going to his glasses. Her words stopped him dead.

“Because I don’t care how much they care about any of us, watching people exsanguinate someone you love isn’t easy or pleasant. And if this fails I’d rather not their last image him be what I’m about to do to him.”

“Exsanguinate?” Tony said carefully.

“Scan him. Scan the wound.”

He did, activating the suit remotely. 

She held her breath because until right this second everything she had done from the moment just before she ‘killed’ the Winter Soldier to now was by guess and instinct.

“Holy fuck,” Tony hissed, then grabbed a holo display and splashed it into the air. 

Bruce squinted and shook his head. “There’s...his blood around the wound isn’t coagulating. The red blood cells are bursting, the muscle is dissolving. And what’s that chunk of metal?”

Bobbi snatched up the needle forceps and a glass jar from the kit, probing at the wound where the little metal gleam showed on the holo display. She came up with a small curved object, which she dropped in the container and tucked into a suit pouch.

They all jumped and flinched as there was a brief tattoo of fist to door, which abruptly stopped.

“Is it spreading?” Bobbi asked, rubbing her hands with disinfectant, selecting tubing, two rolled up extra large blood bags and a scalpel. Looking around, she grabbed up a very high gauge syringe from a cabinet marked ‘large animals’.

“It’s reach a significant portion of his venous system but it seems to need a critical mass to really wreck the joint. The damage is mostly localized to that thigh muscle and the bone marrow in the femur but it reached one of his kidneys which is turning into jello as we speak. Probably having some effects on this intestines too but...if you hadn’t stopped his heart it would have spread to the thoracic cavity on the next couple heart beats, then lungs, his brain. Five, maybe eight beats and he’d—“

“Cardiac arrest minimum. Aneurysm, brain bleed. Dead in seconds,” Bruce completed his statement. 

“Where as now he has...five minutes. Probably. Human brain can go without fresh oxygen for six minutes, super soldier healing and resistance tacks on a couple more—“

Jarvis spoke from the suit. “Falcon has returned, Doctor Barton.” The electronic lock on the door clicked. 

Bobbi ran to the door and popped it open a crack, accepting a large bulging bag from Falcon’s hand before swiftly slamming it shut again. 

“Right, Bruce IV him, Tony ... help me get his pants off.”

They stripped his boots and pants off, Bobbi kicking the fabric to one side. The muscle on his left thigh was an ugly purple black color, like a huge bruise. When Bobbi touched it, it ... squished. Like the containers of plasma Bruce was hooking into an IV leading the Bucky’s flesh arm.

Bobbi and Tony readied the syringe, the tubing and the empty bags.

“Why?” Bruce asked, gesturing at them.

“Super Soldier blood,” Tony answered absently. “Technically a Schedule 1 controlled substance AND toxic waste.”

Bobbi was on her knees in front of Bucky, touching and manipulating the flesh of his thigh, trying to find an unburst blood vessel. “I found a point here on his saphenous vein I can still make out. We might need to shift up, past the worst of the damage, depending on how much of the poison drains here. Bruce, the IV ready?” At his nod, she looked from one man to the other. “I’m going to let gravity pull out as much as it can before we restart his heart.”

Without much more ado, Bobbi touched the spot she’d marked and plunged the needle into the vein in a single expert blow. She pulled out the plunger and swiftly slipped the tubing over the open end, grimly clutching it in place with her hand.

Thick red-blue blood flowed out, down the tubing and into the bag attached to the end. It was sluggish but steady and all three of them turned to watch the real-time display hovering in the air. The red stain that represented whatever the mysterious killing chemical was began to slowly achingly, recede. At the top right was a count down timer. The bag began to fill, a quarter, a half. Three quarters and Bobbi switched them out. By now they’d drained about a third of the blood from his body. 

The timer flipped from positive to negative numbers. 

“Tony, we have to restart his heart,” Bobbi said. “Get ready on the IV, his blood pressure is going to be non existent. I just hope we’ve gotten enough out of his system.”

“Me too. He’s as annoying as the old man but nearly as much fun to poke. Hate to lose a playmate. Clear,” Tony said in an even, soft tone.

Bobbi and Bruce stepped away.

There was a jolt from the suit that still clutched Bucky...an the super soldier began to cough, chest heaving. Bruce leapt forward and flipped open the IV valve. Bobbi clutched at the syringe again as the man’s restarted heart sent much higher pressure spurts of blood through the tube.

The display stuttered, then firmed up to show the red haze of contamination fade slowly to a light filter over the area of the wound. 

Bobbi gasped and ripped out the syringe, wrapping a huge bandage over the whole of Bucky’s thigh, claw marks and all. 

“What?”

“The wound was starting to close over the syringe, as I watched. His healing factor has taken back over.” She gestured urgently at Tony. “We have to get him back to the Tower and the high speed blood filter pronto. This was just ‘don’t die on me’ first aid.”

“Copy that,” Tony said. “Jarvis, take over the suit and warn the medical staff, I’ll come home in the jet. Bobbi, get that door open and make sure the door is clear.”

Bruce began gathering their equipment as Bobbi lunged for the door, ripped it open and snapped: “Get out of the way” to the people huddled outside, before diving to the left herself.

There was a scramble and then the Iron Man armor, clutching a still unconscious Bucky, shot through and into the air, headed for the Tower. 

In its wake, a single voice rang through the air, calm, focussed and spitting mad.

“One of you better explain all of this _right now_ ,” said Captain America.

Every single person looked at Mockingbird, sitting on the concrete with her hands wrapped around her bent knees. She looked up at them, the light from the clinic illuminating her sleek hair, tortured eyes ... and the huge smear of drying blood on her face, stretching from temple diagonally to her chin. It looked like warpaint.

“It’s too long to explain, let me sum up,” she declared.

Then gently toppled sideways to the pavement, her eyes rolling back in her head as the adrenaline crash and low blood sugar sent her into an inarticulate spiral of incoherent rambling and twitching. Hawkeye sighed and bent down to pick her up, enduring a string of mumbling drool across his chest as he hauled her into a damsel carry. 

Tony looked at Steve and Natasha and shrugged. “Honestly, she’s a crazy genius and she saved the freeze pop super soldier’s life...but I’m not taking responsibility for this one. It’ll have to wait to when she’s not...well, the mental equivalent of pineapple yogurt.”


	8. Recovery Room

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi explains what happened to Bucky and Steve explains everything to someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The entire phone conversation here is courtesy of my brilliant friend and co-creator angelt626 — only modified for my style in a few places.)

In the quinjet, Clint dropped Bobbi into a crash couch, forced a double sized protein shake into her hand and went to wrestle the controls from Tony. It was a time honoured ritual that he always won due to the simple fact that none of the other pilots had his precision. 

Bobbi gulped the shake and looked up, taking in the stares she was getting. “Take down your cowl,” she said softly. 

Captain America slowly did as she requested, becoming Steve Rogers again. 

“I...” she said, looking from him to Natasha, meeting both their eyes in turn. “I didn’t have the seconds to spare to explain. I’m sorry. But I wasn’t going to risk his life on your distress.”

“Explain now,” Natasha said tightly. 

Bobbi grimaced. “Please can that wait till I’ve checked on him?”

“Landing,” Clint called from the cockpit. Sometimes it was the only way they all knew they had come to rest, so smooth was his handling of the VTOL quinjets.

When the door gullwinged open, Bobbi popped out and sprinted for the stairs. The Medical Floor was the next one down. Natasha and Steve were right behind her. Bruce — carrying the blood bags they had extracted from the Winter Solider — took the elevator to the R&D floor. The rest of the team quietly broke down and checked the jet. Tony, without explanation, released two of the larger StarkDrones from their container on the belly of the ship, sent them flying into the night, then followed Bruce. 

“Helen?” Bobbi yelled as she skidded into the surgery bay. “How is he?”

Doctor Helen Cho — whom Mockingbird herself had dubbed ‘a freshly laundered sweater — quiet but warm’ — stuck her head out of the very last cubicle in the row. “What did you all do to the poor man? And where are his pants?”

“In the quinjet and it was a humanoid tiger woman, not us,” Bobbi responded. 

Cho narrowed her eyes. “I took this job just for the research opportunities but you don’t have to keep _trying_ to get me a Nobel.”

“Yeah, yeah...how is he?” Bobbi rounded the door and took up residence with Cho in front of the monitor bank to Bucky’s right. Natasha and Steve edged into the small space and just stood helplessly while the doctor and the biochemist babbled medicine and science at each other. 

When they were done, Bobbi smiled in painful relief and clasped Cho on the shoulder. She nodded, flashed a brief smile at Steve and Nat and sauntered away towards the main medical bay and her desk.

Bobbi adjusted a few things on the monitors, then gently stroked her hand down Bucky’s face.

It was dreadfully pale, ghostly. He looked younger and more fragile in this still repose. Not the powerful Winter Soldier, killer of the age, but the quiet, determined young man who’d gone to war because he had to protect the people he loved. 

Without looking up she spoke to Nat and Steve. “Sit. This will take a minute.”

They sat, Nat on the visitors chair and Steve pulling up a stool from one of the other cubicles while Bobbi remained standing, reading from charts and displays on the machines and dedicated StarkTab attached to Bucky’s bed.

Suddenly she pulled her HUD goggles back up and touched the controls on the side, then pinched and threw a graphic into the middle of the space, hovering over Bucky’s feet.

It was the tiger woman in mid air, somehow dodging Hawkeye’s flight of arrows. 

The display paused and zoomed into a grainy freeze frame of her out stretched claws ... and on each pinky “finger” metal gleamed. 

Fast forward and it was her again, crouched, with Bucky’s blood on her face. Her hands rubbed at the liquid...and this time when the display zoomed in, only one pinky claw was metal tipped. 

Bobbi reached into her belt pouch and pulled out the glass container with the piece of metal she had extracted from Bucky’s wound, holding it up it was curved, to fit over a claw. She still either wouldn’t or couldn’t look at either of them.

“I saw this without seeing it. A weapon, intended to deliver a poison. I saw it, without knowing what it was...right up to the point his wound wouldn’t stop bleeding.” Bobbi’s voice was soft, slow, uncertain. “It was shallow, superficial. It shouldn’t have even bled enough to notice. But he was still bleeding and I did...I did my ‘condense fact from the vapour of nuance’ thing.”

She looked up now and her eyes were anguished. Natasha launched herself out of her chair and enfolded the bigger woman in her arms, murmuring as though comforting a child. 

Bobbi leaned into her shoulder, still speaking in a muffled voice. “I wasn’t sure, of course but ... if I was wrong and I acted we could restart his heart easily enough. If I was right and didn’t act ... Steve, Nat, this poison, chemical, contagion, whatever it is? It breaks down cell walls. If it had reached his brain, his heart?” 

Steve ran his hand over his face. “Thank you for the object lesson in why I trust my team, Bobbi. Did you ... is it out of his system?”

Bobbi nodded without looking up. “We physically drained enough out that he was safe to transport here and the purifier is getting the rest. He’s going to have to regenerate a kidney and the bone marrow in his femur. He’s going to be on an IV for a while, since it reached his intestines too. So he’s going to be weak, in pain and dreadfully anemic for ... hell, I don’t know. Nothing like this has happened before.” She sagged into Natasha’s chest, like a wilting flower.

“Thank you, sestra,” Natasha murmured. “For caring for my James.”

“As if ... as if I don’t love him half as well as you do by now,” Bobbi protested, weakly.

Steve stood up. “Hand off. I’ll get her to the Nest, you watch over the sleeping beauty here.”

Bobbi sighed. “I gotta take this to the lab first.”

*****

Bruce was in his “work wear” of white shirt and jeans when they got to the lab, Bobbi reeling drunkenly into walls and Steve’s side on the way. He sighed and shook her a little in the corridor outside the elevator. 

“Don’t make me turn the calorie app back on, Bobbi.”

“Just a bad mix of metabolic uppers and downers last few days, Steve. But, yeah, there’s a couple containers of left over Chinese food in the Nest fridge I’m gonna demolish when we get up there.”

They turned into the main lab to see Bruce standing at the long bench against the wall, the one with the fume hood. He was carefully dripping what was clearly Bucky’s drained blood into a series of test tubes. Steve stopped at the door, more disturbed than he really wanted to let on. Bruce glanced over his shoulder and nodded. Bobbi detached herself and went over to the other scientist. She pulled the little metal object out of her suit and handed it off to Bruce.

He studied it, then gestured at the test tubes. She nodded, turned to the dedicated StarkTab attached to the hood and added several lines to the list of tests. He looked it over, grinned and pushed his glasses up. Bobbi punched him lightly on the shoulder.

As she walked back to Steve, Bruce was removing the little metal object from the container with tweezers and placing it in some complex scanner next to the bench.

They were back in the elevator by the time Steve realized neither of them had spoken a word during the exchange. 

The elevator door opened onto the atrium of the Nest.

Clint was standing there, clearly about to get into the elevator. 

There was a long silent unbelievably awkward pause. 

“Hey, hawky-poo,” Bobbi said eventually.

“I was coming to get you. That chicken chow mein isn’t going to eat itself,” he responded. 

“If you finished the spicy prawns we will have words.”

He held out his hand, his stony expression softening when their fingers touched. He tugged her forward, out of Steve’s aura, and into his own. She sighed again and touched her forehead to his cheek.

Steve cleared his throat, “I...just wanted to make sure she got here okay.”

“You did. She is. You don’t have to stick around,” Clint said in a flat tone.

“Clint I—“

“Not right now, Steve. Okay? Not right now.” With that he turned and re-entered the front door of the apartment proper. Bobbi looked over her shoulder at Steve with a sad expression, but shook her head when he moved forward a little. 

Steve sighed, and punched the button for his own floor, feeling sad and defeated. He changed out of his uniform, into workout gear and went back down to the gym. On the way there he called off the rest of the night shift. He was going to be up all night, he could tell already, no need for anyone else to miss a night’s sleep.

*****

He lost himself in the impact of fist and foot on bag.

He’d been working with Bobbi to incorporate Muay Thai into his fighting style and Sam for legitimate Krav Maga — the real stuff from Israel, not the thing they taught in strip malls. When he broke a pinkie finger because his hands were so tired he wasn’t keeping a proper fist he called it a day. He checked in with the team members who were talking to him (recovering but wary), their house guests (restless but fine), the ducks (in love with Zabu) and eventually the medical floor.

They’d moved Bucky to “Bobbi’s Recovery Room” — a team joke about how often she wound up in the medical bay. Natasha was asleep in on of the more comfortable padded chairs that lived there, curled up like a house cat with her feet tucked in. Bucky was still unconscious — worried he bearded Helen Cho in her office. 

She upbraided him for messing up his knuckles, manually reset his pinkie and explained why Bucky was still out.

“He’s got to rebuild a kidney, the bone marrow in his femur, the lining of part of his intestines and a ton of muscle mass. It’s fine, he’ll heal but he’s also had about half the blood in his body drained. He’s anemic, in severe ketosis and we’re pumping him full of electrolytes, sugars and calcium. If he was awake he’d be in intense pain and the metabolic load of those super soldier bodies you two have isn’t a laugh. Chemically induced coma, monitored by myself, Jarvis and Bobbi, keeps his metabolic rate at something where he isn’t burning more calories than we can put into him.” Her crisp tone modulated, becoming soft. “I hate doing it to him, taking control of his body away like that but it’s the only way we can heal him properly. And his guarantor did give consent — well, one of you anyway.” She cut her eyes at Steve, then looked back at her computer.

All the Avengers had two guarantors on the team — like next of kin but only for Avenging purposes. They could each give consent for different things; some stuff, like pulling a life-support plug needed both. Bucky’s were Nat and Steve. 

Steve nodded, relieved that Natasha had signed off. He thanked Doctor Cho and her staff personally, as he always did when one of the team was laid up, then headed back to his floor for a shower and a nap. Falcon and Iron Man had day shift and they were both up, chipper and treating him like he was contagious.

As the hot water sluiced away the sweat and dirt of the night, Steve realized he was desperately lonely and out of his depth. The people he normally relied on were the reasons he had no one to rely on right now. 

He needed to talk to someone who wasn’t part of the problem, and the only person he really wanted to talk to wasn’t there. 

In the kitchen, after mechanically forcing down some food, he pulled out his Starkphone and hit the ‘call Sharon’ speed dial, right on the home screen. 

He waited, listening to the phone ring, emotions churning inside of him as he wished that she was there, with him. His super senses could still detect her scent in the bedroom, the closet, if he went in there but that was just making do with what he could get.

She answered suddenly and his heart skipped in his chest at the sound of her voice. She sounded groggy and concerned. 

“Steve? What’s Wrong?”

“I woke you,” he said, finally thinking to look at the time on the phone face...1400. 

Two PM. Three thirty AM.

The timezones for New York and Adelaide right next to each other thirteen and a half hours apart.

“It’s fine, what’s wrong?”

"Don't worry about it, I'll be okay. We can talk later."

“It’s bad enough that you called me and didn’t think about the time — sloppy, soldier boy. You don’t get to blow me off now. Hang on a second.”

Steve heard a beep and pressed the “camera on” button automatically, unable to hide a soft smile at the sight of Sharon with bedhead as she situated her phone. "I'm awake already, so we might as well talk."

"You sure?"

"Well, you didn't call for phone sex, did you?"

“No!”

"Didn't think so. What's bothering you?"

He carefully propped up his phone on his milk glass and with a sigh, launched into the story, being careful about the details he shared with her. As he did he felt a weight that had been pressing on his chest lift, but still felt just as weary.

“So now Clint is mad at me and hurt, Bucky’s running interference on my mood and the team’s expectations and it’s not a gift of his, Bobbi’s one step from a stuttering mess we have to force to eat and everyone else is acting like the floor turns to eggshells when I come into a room. Like I’m delicate.” 

"Have you talked to everyone?"

"Not yet, and I'm not sure why."

"Think maybe you're ashamed of the way you reacted, and you don't want to face up to it?"

He opened his mouth to refute what she was saying, but found he couldn't. She was right, which wasn't a surprise. "How do you do that? Do you and Bobbi coordinate your telepathy behind my back or something?"

She rolled her eyes. "How do I know what you're feeling even if you're not sure?"

“Yeah.”

"Because you're you, and I’m me and it’s part of the job. I'd like to think I know my man pretty well.”

That brought a genuine smile to his face. "God, I miss you."

"I miss you, too. I'll be home as soon as this conference-that-is-not-an-op-no-sir-why-would-you-think-that? is over, I promise."

"Want to talk about it?"

"I barely want to _complete_ it. It’s finicky and boring as hell, but laying ground work always is. You've got enough on your plate right now, and we both know you’re an artillery shell, not a scalpel. I need you, I'll call. Now you want to tell me what else is wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong, Sharon. Just..." He rubbed the back of his neck, closing his eyes as his voice faded. 

“Uh huh, fess up. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not telling me something. You’re doing that thing that you do when you feel guilty because something preventable happened or someone got hurt.”

“What thing?”

“Oh no, I’m not giving you your tell. Who got hurt?”

“Bucky.”

“How bad is it?”

“He’s had better days.”

"Steve." It was an admonishment and a statement of love wrapped in one.

"It's not great. It was almost...lethal in fact. Bobbi and Tony and Bruce had to literally drain the blood out of him, in the field, in a veterinary surgical bay. He'll be okay, though. He's on the medical floor right now, in Bobbi’s room, unconscious but stable."

"Is there anything I can do?"

“Learn to teleport and be sitting on my couch when I turned around? No, other than this, this keeping me sane, the hard work.”

“I’ll invoice you for full payment when I get home,” she grinned and then sobered. “Do you want me to tell you what I think is really eating at you?”

He just looked at her, eyes narrowed, which she seemed to take as a ‘yes’. 

“You feel guilty because Bucky got hurt. You feel guilty because you don’t know how to fix the problem you caused when you hurt Clint, and you sort of resent having to fix that because it wasn’t your fault really. 

You’re more upset than you want to admit about how badly those memories, those accusations, still bother you because you think you should be beyond all that, which is silly. You didn’t deal with any of that baggage when it happened and just kept on not dealing with it because it never came up. 

Steve. Clint’s emotional response isn’t your fault. How you acted and reacted is. You got complacent about the people around you, about their lives and secrets and needs. You, in your head, stuck them all in their own pictures, that you drew, and expected them to stay there. Static and pretty and easy to deal with. 

Then Clint — and of course it would be Clint, though I’d put money on Tony having something like this in the mix too — drew over your neat little black and white drawing in rainbow crayon, which made you a little mad.

Only his sexuality isn’t really something you should — or have a right — be be concerned about.”

“I made him feel like he couldn’t talk to me, Sharon. Like I was going to hold him to some old-time standard of manhood. Like I was going to judge him.”

“I think the whole team expects you to hold them to a standard, Steve. It’s just a little different for each of them. Let me ask you: does that reveal, that he’s bi, make you care about him less?”

“No.”

“Do you trust him less?”

“No.”

"Does it impair his ability to do his job?"

"Absolutely not; it makes him an asset to the team, on a lot of levels. In fact, I hope someday he’s willing to come out public with it! The amount of good we could do in our charity work with an openly queer hero...” Steve’s voice became more animated for a moment, happy and hopeful.

“Apologize to him for your actions, not your emotions. Ask him what he needs from you, so that he knows he never needs to hide who he is, or lie about himself. You know you where wrong and he deserves to hear it from you. Alone. Not even Bobbi around, so you can both just speak your minds. 

Then listen to him. He’ll bluster and yell — he’s Clint — and when that’s done he’ll say something simple and obvious about how to deal with it all that you never thought of, also because he’s Clint and he’s not stupid. 

Then you need to apologize to the team for the same reasons. As long as you don’t everyone going to keep thinking that you don’t know how to deal with it and they’ll keep tiptoeing around. Or, for Stark, as much as he can tiptoe in the metal suit.”

Steve exhaled sharply, feeling as though the lights had just been flipped on. "You're saying I'm an emotional center to the team."

"When you're as close as we all are, we're all emotional centers of the team. But it’s like the solar system, just because moons orbit planets doesn’t mean we don’t all orbit the sun. 

We all balance each other out, complement each other, until one of the cogs gets thrown off-kilter. Then everyone doesn't know how to respond because the machine isn't running as smoothly as it should. You, Steven Rogers, are and will always be the biggest cog in that machine.”

"And I'm the one that went off track."

“Your words, not mine."

"What about Bobbi?"

"She feels guilty because she's your right hand, your support, and she most likely thinks she should have read the situation better.

Bobbi had a rep in SHIELD for never making mistakes. It wasn’t true — she was just so smart she could adjust on the fly fast enough no one noticed. But I watched her, over the years, start to...uh...believe her own press.”

"She thinks she failed me and that I'm upset with her.”

“She did fail you and you are upset with her. Don’t lie to yourself there.”

"Yeah, they should have come to me first, in private,” Steve said with a touch of rancor. “Just in case.”

"It might not be her job to mange your emotions, but she thinks it is. You do lean on her Steve, sometimes so hard I think you don’t know how she much braces herself. Regardless, you need to apologize for making her feel bad as well."

“I messed up bad, didn’t I?”

“Only your body is perfect, my fine little super soldier. The rest of you is human. It’s comforting when you make these mistakes, otherwise I’d be afraid of corrupting you, perfect porcelain statue you can be. 

I trust Bucky will be all right, and so will the rest of the team, but you do need to say ‘sorry’ and mean it.”

“Or?”

"Or else it's going to get ugly, if it hasn't already. I'm willing to guess that Clint and Bobbi both feel worse now than they did before the attack because they’ll think they let their emotions get in the way, and Bucky suffered the consequences. Fact is you all took a hit and maybe you wouldn’t have if you were all in better sync. You can’t ever be sure. We should be glad it wasn't worse.”

Steve rubbed at the spot in between his eyebrows, now some much less weary than before he'd talked with Sharon. She was the one person he could talk to and know would never judge him.

"Thank you. I needed this, more than I thought." His voice was soft even to his ears, and filled with longing. 

"What else am I here for?" she yawned. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I'm still trying to figure that out, if I'm being honest. I'll let you know. Go back to sleep.”

He paused, savouring the words he was about to speak on his tongue, as he always did. “I love you."

"I love you too. Feel free to call me again if you just can't wait for me to get home. Possibly with fewer clothes on," she hummed.

“Sharon!”

Her eyebrow raised in a naughty manner. "I'm on the other side of the world, Captain Rogers. And my boyfriend isn't with me. What else is a girl to do?”

"I'll think about it. Good night."

"Good night. Let me know what happens with the team." She ended their video call.

That left him staring at the lock screen photo on his phone. It was of the team, all of them grinning widely, scattered around the common floor TV pit. 

An extreme sense of guilt trickled down his spine from his brain. He knew what he had to do; now he just had work up the courage to _do it_.


	9. On Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint and Steve hug it out. Eventually.

The first thing Steve did, upon hanging up the phone with Sharon, was go to bed. He didn’t need much sleep but he did need some and now seemed as good a time to take it as any.

As he was tossing in the too-wide-too-cool-without-Sharon bed, before falling into a fitful few hours nap he realized in the old days—during the war, and the time just after the Invasion of New York when the Avengers had all split up again, hoping they’d not be needed anymore—there was no way he’d have slept right then. He’d either have been watching over Bucky, doing an analysis of the tactical situation, or both at once.

But he trusted the rest of the team to do their jobs on patrol, you couldn’t pry Natasha out of Bucky’s room with a heated crow bar, he knew damn well once she’d slept and eaten Bobbi was going to be head down in read outs and video footage and the science stuff he couldn’t do anything with anyway. That was comforting enough that he flopped onto his back and fell asleep.

When he woke and dressed and ate he took the stairs down to the armoury level — which also held the playback suite they used for in depth analysis.

As he’d expected, Bobbi was in the padded, near reclining chair she’d persuaded Stark to install in front of the main monitor bank, the rest of the room black, just the flickering lights of the feeds dancing across her face. She didn’t look up when he walked in but she knew he was there: the door deliberately opened in the line of vision of anyone in that chair. No one was going to risk being snuck up on.

He wandered over and leaned on the back of the chair, studying the feeds. It was nearly entirely the surveillance cams at the zoo — grainy, black and white, enhanced by Tony’s tech to within an inch of their lives. 

Top four monitors were the three HUD’s (Tony, Sam, Bobbi) and then Bruce’s feed on the quinjet. 

“Seen anything yet?’ Steve asked eventually, finding his gaze drawn over and over to a loop of the beautiful, lethal tiger woman hurling through the air on her initial leap from the trees. She was so lithe and supple that it looked like she was less dodging Hawkeye’s arrows than dancing with them. 

“Yeah, but you’re not going to like it,” she said. “I’m just trying to isolate the best example so that no one can question me, hang on.” Her hands played across the dual control pads set into the arms of the chair, fluid and smooth. The bottom row of monitors, still dark, flickered to life. The left two showed two angles of what looked like the tiger woman dodging the arrow hail; the right ones showed what was clearly the moment just before Bucky came out of the shadows behind her. 

Steve winced. “Why was he going for a kill shot, anyway? He knows better.”

“Honestly,” she said, still working on footage, “we’re all coming off the wrong foot right now and though he’d deny it I think the fact she went at Natasha like she did pissed him off. But...well...I wonder if maybe he’d faced something like her before, another chimera? And the Winter Solider part of him knew how dangerous they can be.”

“That makes a lot of sense.”

“I’m the dumb jock of the science department in this place but I have my uses,” she said, her voice distant and vague. 

Steve sighed heavily at the deprecation but held his tongue. 

“Okay, here, look at this.” One of the left monitors froze, then began to play in very slow motion, almost frame by frame. Steve watched it in silence; they both preferred not to tell the other person what to look for right away. It stopped as she landed in front of Thor, then looped and started up again. This time something about the way she moved in the air made him lean forward and mutter “huh”.

“Yeah, it’s not as obvious there but it’s like a huge flag with Buck,” Bobbi said when she saw he’d noticed something.

Both the right hand monitors started to play, each a different angle of the moment Bucky shot at the tiger woman. Steve looked back and forth, back and forth, through three playbacks. On playback four, he leaned down and hit the controls on the desk, freezing the one monitor that clearly showed Bucky’s hands and gun. Then he rewound the other one, the other angle, to just before when he froze the other frame and let it tick on and past. Once, twice, a third time.

He stopped them both, and straightened up.

“She didn’t dodge that bullet,” he said with finality.

Bobbi laughed, without a lot of humor, fussing around and getting the two feeds he’d touched onto the biggest monitors. Together they watched them play out again.

Now that he was looking for it, it was so obvious. 

The tiger woman hadn’t dodged Bucky’s shot. She’d been moving to avoid it — moving in a precise, measured path that was not some accidental swerve or trip — _before he’d begun to shoot_. What was more she hadn’t struck at where he was — she’d struck at where he was going to be.

Steve and Bobbi exchanged a dark look. 

“You sure?” He said.

“Yeah, she does it a couple times with the arrows but it’s so fast it’s hard to parse. With Bucky — I checked with Iron Man’s suit scans. The prevailing wind was towards him, there was nothing reflective in front of her and he literally didn’t make a sound, if you pull out all the ambient noise there isn’t a blip on any frequency. She didn’t avoid that bullet. She _knew_ it was coming.”

“Telepath?”

“Sensitive of some sort. Explains why Clint didn’t hit her more than a glance.”

Steve grimaced. “That’ll make him feel better. Uh...can I tell him?”

Bobbi paused all the screens and looked up at him, settling back in the chair. “You...you mean to apologize, right?”

“Yes, but I’m not telling you what I’m going to say. That’s between Clint and I and honestly not your business.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You and Clint are always my business.”

“I owe him as much privacy and dignity as I can manage here.”

Bobbi sighed. “Yeah, you do. I think...no matter how much I say you hurt him it’s going to surprise you how much you hurt him.” She held up her hand to his opened mouth. “He knows why you did what you did. But Clint’s a really emotional guy, Steve, even more than you all think. He feels a lot; he gets wounded fast and easy. It’s why he was a shitty assassin; he empathizes.” She stretched and leaned back in the chair, closing her eyes a moment. “Honestly, we bonded over that, I’m the same way. It’s one reason we’re both such jokers.”

“Protective coloration.”

She grinned with her eyes still closed. “Yeah. Like cuttlefish but with nicer abs.” She opened her eyes and gestured at the monitors. “I’m going to pull and condense all this footage for the next team meeting but can you give me a day before you call it? I gotta do biochem stuff to go along with it and that takes time.”

“What were those tests you added to Bruce’s list yesterday?” Steve asked, intrigued.

“Oh, he didn’t think to run an LCN DNA typing on the infected plasma or the sample trace that still remained in the device; I don’t blame him, Tony and I have been fighting over that being added to the base tests we run on every sample of anything that comes into the lab. It ties up two processors for at least a day; I personally think it’s worth it but Mr ‘biochem is too fussy’ can be hard to convince.” She blinked and rubbed the back of her neck. “That’s the funny thing about my disciplines—we don’t have the names, the celebs, like Hawking and Einstein and Curie. There are a couple billion people who are alive because one team in pre-WWI Germany figured out how to fix nitrogen from the air and invented modern fertilizers but like the team lead is the same dude who invented chemical warfare. Hero and war criminal all in one and no one remembers his name any—“

“Fritz Haber,” Steve said flatly.

Bobbi started up in actual surprise, blinking at him. Her cheeks reddened. “Your father,” she breathed, her voice low and ashamed. “Yes, of course, I’m sorry.”

He waved her apology off, his mouth set and face grim. She swallowed and nodded. 

“Anyway,” she continued into the awkward silence, “I’ve got some theories about what’s going on here and I need to work them through, also maybe talk to Ka-Zar and Shanna abou—“

“Facial recognition scans complete, Doctor Barton, Captain Rogers. Would you like the results?” Jarvis broke in smoothly.

The two humans froze, staring at each other.

“I wasn’t running a facial recognition scan,” Bobbi said.

“It is an automatic process Mr. Stark has recently added to all HUD recordings,” Jarvis responded crisply.

“Facial recognition on who?” Steve asked.

“The assailant who wounded Sergeant Barnes,” Jarvis replied.

“The actual fuck?” Exclaimed Bobbi.

“Language,” Steve said. 

*****

Natasha was awake and reading from a tattered paperback when Bobbi came into the recovery room later. She looked up and smiled broadly, through pale cheeks and deeply shadowed eyes. Bobbi blinked and before she could open her mouth, Bucky spoke.

His voice was quiet, but strong, his eyes still closed. “Bobbi, if you wanted my pants off that badly you coulda just _asked_.”

Bobbi looked from Natasha to him as he opened his eyes, then back at Natasha. She turned to the supply closet next to the door, opened it and removed a spare pillow. Holding it in both hands, she advanced towards the bed, speaking to Natasha as she did. “Ima smother him, ‘kay?” 

“Enjoy,” Natasha responded, turning back to her book. Bucky grimaced and flexed his metal hand. There was an inhibitor on his arm, since he tended to wake up fast and violently from anaesthetics and no one liked putting the medical crew in actual danger. 

“Milli Moy, I said I was sorry for being over-protective.”

“Yes,” Natasha said calmly, still reading. “I didn’t say I accepted the apology.”

Bobbi leaned down with the pillow...  
...and tucked it behind Bucky’s head, then helped him sit up a little. 

He laughed, with just a little relief in his voice. “You have a very believable ‘death tone’, Bobbi.”

“Well, you have the best ‘murder strut’ on the team so fair’s fair.”

“What do I have?” Natasha asked, looking up.

“Lethal legs,” they both said at the same time. 

“Pysch,” Natasha said.

Bobbi and Bucky exchanged a grin, then Bobbi pulled up a chair. Before she spoke to either of them she pulled down the StarkTab from the head of the bed and paged through a few screens, then replaced it with a relieved smile.

“You’re regenerating that kidney much faster than I figured, which is both good for you and good for our metrics on your ability to sustain non-lethal damage.”

“Would I have been able to regenerate my brain?” Bucky said. “Or my heart?”

Natasha scooted her chair over and grasped his flesh hand. “He means, in that stupid awkward way — thank you for saving his life, sestra.”

Bobbi blew out her breath, blinking a little. “You’re welcome and I’m just so glad I was right cause otherwise this conversation would be not fun.”

Bucky squeezed Natasha hand, released it and reached out for Bobbi. She took it in both hers, clutching hard for a moment. “Are you eating?” He asked her, soft and stern, almost Steve-like. 

She narrowed her eyes and shook his hand like a dog shaking a rat. “Yes, Clint and I ate all the leftovers from that take-out and then had sex all night. You, might I remind you, were down here being fed through a tube and wearing diapers.”

“You don’t gotta be mean about it,” he said, but he was laughing. 

“What’s up?” Natasha asked, gently brushing a strand of his hair out of his face. 

“I wanted to check on him but...we got facial recognition on the Tiger Lady.”

That made them both stiffen in shock.

“What the—?” Bucky exclaimed.

“I know, right?” Bobbi released his hand and it found Natasha’s again. “Honestly it’s not even the weirdest thing we figured out from the HUD videos and surveillance footage. There’s indications she’s a ‘sensitive’ of some sort. She didn’t dodge the bullet, Buck. She knew you were gonna shoot.”

Natasha and Bucky exchanged a look. Natasha leaned forward. “Spill, woman.”

Bobbi began to explain. 

*****

Steve paused at the entrance to the shooting range, hearing the robot precision of Clint’s shooting. Only knowing that last night he’d been in the Nest and not down here for the whole two days gave him a little comfort. He took a deep breath and entered.

They couldn’t have the door open into the line of sight of people in the range; that would be lunacy. Instead every lane was equipped with a small virtual screen that turned on and flashed a feed of anyone crossing the threshold of the range. That person still had to turn two corners before being in the line of fire.

No one, not even a Stark Drone, had ever been able to move fast enough into the room that Hawkeye could not draw, aim and fire a kill shot before they were in position to hit him. 

Steve considered it a good sign he didn’t have an arrow pointed at him when he walked into the range hallway. Hawkeye was in fact still shooting, he could see the point of his elbow bob in and out from behind the partition half way down the range he favoured. 

He walked till he was just behind the archer, who still had about half a hip quiver to go. Steve settled in against the wall, arms crossed, and watched the deeply soothing process of Hawkeye spiralling his shots in a perfect fractal pattern from the center of the virtual target.

They didn’t use paper; instead Stark had an absorbent ballistic protector on the far wall that would withstand up to two flying strikes from Mjolnir. Each lane was equipped with a virtual target that could be manipulated to any size or “distance” from the shooter. Drones retrieved Clint’s arrows and bullets were gathered, melted down, recast, reprimed and placed back in the armoury within a day. It was carbon neutral. 

The projection could be set to show the results of each shot or display it all at once at the end. Clint had his set to “single shot” and the display was an oddly beautiful pattern that looked random and Steve knew wasn’t.

When his quiver was empty, Clint touched the ‘recover’ button on the wall, and turned to Steve with a sigh.

“Yeah, okay, let’s do this. But stay there, all right?”

Steve nodded. He was in a spot where Clint would have to swing all the way around to shoot him and he could five out of seven times avoid the arrow. 

“I’d like it if you started,” Steve said calmly. “I’m not going to pretend I know exactly what you’re thinking.”

“That’s a first,” Clint said in a dangerous voice.

Steve bit his tongue.

“You got a problem with me being queer?” Clint snapped as he reloaded his quiver from the retrieved arrows the drone brought him. 

“No. If it was my business—it’s not—all I have to say is stay safe. Anything else is between you and Bobbi.”

Clint grunted. Arrows were strung, drawn and fired with that smooth, beautiful economy that had stopped casual observers in their tracks. Steve was ‘used’ to it and he still got a thrill in his belly from the action.

“She’s enough, you know. More’n enough. I’d be happy never touching another person with her in my life.”

“Clint, if there is one thing I could never believe it would be that you did not desire Bobbi more than anything in the universe.”

“Hunhg, yeah, okay. Why’d you walk out on me then? I know what Buck’n’Bobbi say, I wanna hear it from you.” 

If you knew Clint well—if you’d heard his voice in the moments of greatest stress any human could feel, and the greatest happiness possible, and every day in every way as the comforting background noise of your life you could hear just exactly how deeply hurt he was. Just how desperate and agonized his decision to come out to his found family had been. How much he’d been counting on Steve—his surrogate father and brother at the same time—to accept and approve of him. 

Steve broke. Steve Rogers, who did not break, who stood against the might of HYDRA and refused to fall, Steve Rogers who would endure anything to protect and save the innocent—hearing the pain and fear in Clint Barton’s voice—broke.

He surged forward and between one shot and the next wrapped the smaller man in a hug even he could not break. 

“Listen to me, Clint,” he hissed into the other man’s hair, against the surprised struggle. “There is nothing you could do, nothing, that would make me love and respect you less. Nothing, except hurt the people we love. You understand? If you hurt Bobbi, my precious sister, or Nat. If you deliberately hurt an innocent or anyone on the team I would be angry; I would condemn that. But there is nothing else you could do that would ever make me think less of you, make me respect you less, rely on you less, be afraid of that bow and your aim less. You are my friend and my brother and my teammate and don’t you ever think there is anything that could make you _less_ to me.”

As he spoke the archer’s body went still, settled, sank into him, until they were belly to belly in a deep hug that sent spikes of warmth up Steve’s spine. Clint’s breath went ragged, gasping, and Steve felt a patch of wet on his chest. 

“Yeah,” the archer breathed eventually. “Okay. I believe you. I...yeah, okay. It’s...it’s okay.” 

Steve hugged him a little tighter. “I don’t care what you do; I care who you are. And I know who that is. So nothing else matters to me.”

Clint dropped his bow, until then held awkwardly away from Steve, and hugged the other man fully. They stood like that for a while and both pretended they weren’t crying until they actually weren’t. 

In time Clint picked up his bow, had the drone retrieve his arrows and prepared to shut down the range for the night. 

Steve settled back against the wall and decided to share the news he and Bobbi had learned a little while ago in the video suite.

“By the way, we know who the tiger lady is.”

Clint whipped around, staring.

Steve grinned and continued. “Jarvis found her through facial rec. She’s from Chicago, the widow of a cop and an ex-physics student. Greer Grant Nelson — she was declared dead about eight years ago.’


	10. Information Dump

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bobbi is clever, but we all knew that.

The team meeting the next day was all hands on deck, including Shanna and Ka-Zar and Zabu but it was topped off by Steve proudly pushing Bucky in a wheelchair into the room before they started.

Bucky tried to then get out of the wheelchair to take his usual seat and was verbally beaten about the head and neck by everyone until he surrendered and subsided. Clint very deliberately took his own seat next to Steve — he and Bobbi being in one of their Captain America mandated ‘trial separations’ in meetings for being disruptive. A gentle wave of relief flitted across everyone in the room who hadn’t been sure if they made up or not. 

When everyone settled, Steve opened his hand to Bobbi, who was still standing. 

“We all know the identity of our assailant from the zoo,” she opened with no preamble. She paced slowly at the end of the table, her hands tapping on her thighs where her baton holsters would be in uniform. As she spoke, the holo screen at the center of the table flickered to life, showing images of an attractive statuesque woman, a university campus, a city sky line. “It’s turned out to not be as much help as you would think. Greer Grant Nelson. Widow of a Chicago cop, shot off-duty in a robbery. Killer was never caught. Nelson returned to university after his death, to the physics department at Northeastern. Wound up as a research assistant to Dr. Joanne Tumulo who was doing ‘human potential’ experimentation—“

“Super soldier stuff?” Asked Bruce.

“Super soldier stuff,” Bobbi confirmed.

Steve’s hand spasmed on the table top, then clenched. 

“Things get really confused and messy right before Nelson vanished—there’s some indication that the lab might have been responsible for that weird wannbe criminal mastermind ‘The Cat’ who showed up briefly about a decade ago.” Bobbi threw that to Natasha who perked up.

“She was on the Raft, was she not?” Nat asked.

“Yeah, on the loose now but depowered as far as anyone can tell,” Clint said. 

“Fun fact, Walker’s Hellcat costume is from her arsenal,” Bobbi said before she returned to her recitation. “Anyway, Nelson was involved in something that included unregulated human experimentation. She might have been a test subject, from incidental information gleaned in interviews with friends after her...well, what everyone thought was her death.”

The screen flipped to show news footage of a building with the top floor engulfed in flames, partially blown apart. “Tumulo’s lab was blown up, with them both inside...or so everyone thought.”

“I read about that,” Tony said. “That was the same night Donalbain Tech burnt down. They were a rival of ours until then.”

“Yeah. They could never prove it but the Chicago PD thought Donalbain was Tumulo’s secret donor; she’d stopped applying for grants two years early after failing to provide experimental details. No one ever connected the two incidents beyond that. Now — given that our tiger lady and Nelson are the same person — it seems the experiments worked. But what she’s been doing for eight years, out of sight, and why she’s in New York now is unclear. And before anyone asks it’s not just the external physiology that matches. DNA pulled off that one arrow that hit her proves that yes, this is Greer Grant Nelson.”

An image of the tiger woman appeared, with Nelson’s face superimposed over it. They matched exactly, once you factored in the fur and fangs.

“She’s the one who killed those people in the alley then,’ said Sam.

“Oddly, no, she probably isn’t.”

Bobbi pulled up the wireframe image of the alley killer that she and Tony had constructed from the data she and Bruce had brought back. Superimposed over the image of the tiger lady it was clear the killer was taller, with longer limbs and bigger claws. 

“I name it odd that this fierce creature would appear at the same time as that murderous one,” Thor rumbled.

“Oh, I think it’s definitely connected and I think I might know how.” Bobbi looked over at Shanna and Ka-Zar, still with their quiet hunters calm. Zabu rested his great fanged head on Za-Zar’s shoulder. The four of them shared a few significant looks, then Ka-Zar nodded. Bobbi sighed and sat down on the edge of the table, near Steve.

“Look, I need you all to just ... go with what I’m about to tell you. It’s stuff you’re going to be really freaked out you didn’t know.” She fiddled with the table controls for a while, pulling up a globe image. As it spun, it narrowed down to a section of Antarctica.

“This spot right here, that looks like just more barren ice...isn’t. It’s a series of valleys, flanked by active volcanos and concealed by alien technology. It’s a tropical paradise, a self-sustaining micro-climate with several tribes of humans native to it, mega fauna like Zabu there and...”

She trailed off, seeming unable to find the words she needed to say. 

“Dinosaurs,” Shanna finished for her. “There are multiple species of dinosaurs, from several time periods.”

Clint slapped his forehead. “That was in the stuff Nat leaked, after the D.C. incident. Everyone thought it was a lie — said it was in the Arctic. No one could find it, got chalked up to misinformation.”

“Yeah, I think Fury did that post release. Smart of him,” Bobbi nodded. “The Savage Land it’s called. I spent some time there as a young agent, assessing the biologicals and ... um .... other things.”

“We assessed many things together, indeed, my Doctor Morse,” Ka-Zar said in an impressive deadpan.

Clint barked a laugh, which rolled around the table to everyone but Steve and Bobbi herself. There it washed up against the shore of stony, set faces and died a quick death. 

Bobbi got up and started pacing again. “There’s no way to ease into this but...this is who I think we’re up against.”

And the display in the center of the table formed up into the image of a bipedal pteranodon-faced and -winged reptilian humanoid.

“Jesus Christ!” Yelped Sam.

“What manner of creature is that?” Thor said, leaning forward.

“That,” Bobbi said, “is what used to be Dr. Karl Lykos. These days, he calls himself Sauron.”

“That’s a little derivative,” Bruce said. 

Bobbi rolled her eyes. “I swear, he honestly thinks he made it up. Either that or that no one else read Lord of the Rings.”

“Used to be? Late onset mutation?” Tony asked.

“Kinda?” Bobbi said in a rising tone. “It’s not a birth mutation, like the X-Men. He was mutated post-puberty, as an adult, when—and I swear to Thor’s family I’m not kidding here—he was bitten by a mutated pterodactyl.”

“He’s a were-pterodactyl?” Clint burst out.

“What is my life since I joined this team?” Bucky asked Natasha plaintively.

Bobbi made a kind of sobbing noise, rubbing her face. When she spoke her voice was squeaky and strained. “Were-pterodactyl would make sense so, no. He essentially contracted energy vampirism—please! No more interruptions or I’m going to taser myself—which meant he could drain the life force of anything he touched to increase his speed and power. Thing is, he wound up draining a mutant of some sort—the X-Men were down there around that time—and the X-gene interacted oddly with the forced mutation. It turned him into that; the skin flaps are functional wings, FYI. When it first happened, he turned back into Lykos off and on but I think from what Shanna and Ka-Zar have told me the transformation seems to have become permanent. Worse, he’s gotten stronger and other abilities have shown. He has some sort of hypnotic power that acts as super suggestion—it’s resistible if you know what he’s doing and it requires eye contact. He can cause hallucinations if you let him in and essentially mind-slave you.“

“He is quite evil,” Ka-Zar added.

“I think he’s the reason Greer is acting the way she is. I think he’s got control of her somehow and holding onto it. I have no idea how they met or what he’s doing but I think he followed Ka-Zar, Shanna and Zabu to New York to kill them, and their unborn child. If Ka-Zar and the She-Devil are gone, he can basically enslave the population of the Savage Land and do what he wants. And I think he’s setting her up to take the fall for their murders by killing those people in the ally.” She looked over at the Family Plunder. “Probably planned on your camping in the park over night. Even a non-lethal attack, if those injectors had grazed Shanna or you...”

Shanna grasped Ka-Zar’s hand hard, her other hand going to her stomach. 

Bobbi pulled up the wireframe image of the attacker again and superimposed Sauron over it. The match for height, arm span, everything, was perfect. “I think he was the killer. He would have had to climb up the wall to launch off the top of the building, his wing span is like twelve feet.”

“This is a lot to digest, Bobbi, but if it’s true what’s our next step?” Steve asked, studying the image carefully. 

“Well. I figure he’s going to have to call Greer back to wherever he’s holed up soon, if only to get rid of her if he’s convinced the plan failed. So, instead, I think we should give our tiger lady a free shot at her target. If we can subdue her, then make her believe the Plunders are dead I figure she’ll make a bee line right back to lizard daddy. I’ve prepared a few special grenades that might help us slow her down.”

Another graphic appeared on the screen, just an organic chemistry formula.

Bruce leaned back in his chair and burst out laughing, followed by Tony.

“What is that?” Natasha asked, leaning forward.

“The chemical structure of Nepetalactone, the active ingredient in Nepeta cataria,” Bobbi said with a sly smile. “The plant also known as catnip.”


	11. The Hunter Victorious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter ‘kills’ her prey, finally

The Hunter huddled high in a tree, pressing herself against the trunk, trying to get the smell of manblood out of her fur. No matter how much she groomed, she could not lessen the miasma of _wrongness_ about it. Perhaps if she had not had the warm salt of good cattle in her mouth just moments before she might not have noticed but the contrast was so extreme it made her head hurt. 

Master had not come for her yet, soothed her fears, wrapped her in the soft grey fog of his will. He had not come because her work was not done; those ... things that smelt of metal and oil and leather had taken her prey from her (TWICE!), and shot her with arrows and caused her to get the dreadful stink of human on her skin. 

She thought, perhaps, she might be able to track them back to where they lived — part of her told her that great silver tower she could see was their den — but she would be seen and Master had told her she could not be ...

Then she heard it, far in the distance. The roar of her kin-cousin, the great cat who travelled with her prey. They were back in the park. 

They were back in her killing zone.

The Hunter smiled and leapt fearlessly from tree to tree, heading towards the sound.

She fetched up against the great open space she had first seen them in, warm and shadow dappled in the long summer twilight. It seemed strangely empty of other humans, and they seemed strangely careless to be walking there but the Hunter herself cared no more. 

She could stand it no longer. As they moved aimlessly around the space she broke from the cover of the trees and charged.

Her great toothed kin roared again, shattering the air, and met her in a handful of leaps. She dodged under him, both twisting and spinning in impossibly small spaces, neither of them laying a claw or fang upon the other. 

As they danced, the humans joined them.

Fools. 

She had lost one of the special claws Master had given her but there was enough venom in the one left to end them both. She vaulted over the back of her kin (the saber-tooth was not of interest to her Master) and, howling, spread her arms to ...

Something appeared out of a strange blur in the air just before her that smelt of fresh blood suddenly and with a soft _puff_ noise, the Hunter was enveloped in a dense cloud of thick smoke. 

She choked, and inhaled ... and landed on all fours in the long, warm grass so soft and warm and comfy she could just lay in it a moment, just a moment, her prey would remain.

*****

Gasping, Mockingbird dropped the camotech field that made her invisible, blood streaming from her nose. She made sure the tiger woman was deep into the effects of the “catnip bomb” she’d thrown at her — yes, she was rolling around on her back, purring and licking her lips. As she rolled onto her side towards the Avenger, Mockingbird pounced and deftly stripped the remaining claw cap from her pinky, replacing it with one from her pocket. She grimaced and took a flat metal strip out of another pocket. “Sorry about this, I’m not trying to cop a feel I swear.” Then she attached it to the inside of one of the cups of the tiger woman’s fabric bikini top. 

Then she turned towards the Plunders, reached out her hand, and stumbled hard — one knee nearly going right out. Shanna caught her. 

“It’s okay,” Mockingbird said, waving off their concerns. “It’s just the tech. I’ll be alright in a moment. We’ve got about seven minutes here.” She handed out the rest of the props they had prepared, ran over the plan again and then helped them get prepped up. 

The whole time Zabu had lain next to the tiger woman, watching her intently. He growled, low and long, and Mockingbird started. “Shit, her metabolism must be insane fast. Okay, Zabu with me; the field isn’t big enough to cover you too.” She squinted at the Plunders. “The toxin is out of play but that doesn’t mean she won’t try to slit your throats or something, if she pierces the hologram overlay. I don’t give a shit about the plan, if that happens, Hawkeye is going to take her out.”

Ka-Zar and Shanna both nodded, as Zabu growled again, louder. Mockingbird spun and ran for the treeline, the saber-tooth at her heels. High in one of the trees, black and purple moved against the green a moment. Hawkeye was in position. 

In her ear, Captain America spoke. “Tracker is live. And she’s getting alert, get under cover.”

Mockingbird dove into the shadows under the trees, activated the ‘true camo’ setting on her suit (which had no cognitive effects) and draped the edge of her trench coat over Zabu. The field settled over them both and they were gone, just two more bushes in the undergrowth. 

*****

The Hunter roused from the strange dream, of warm grass and lovely scents to find that somehow, she had killed her prey.

They were lying there, on the ground, soaked in their own blood. Both had claw slashes across their abdomen, on their legs. They appeared to have died in great pain, their bodies twisted and broken. Beyond them lay the corpse of her cousin, the saber-tooth. 

Her heart twisted in her chest.

She looked at her hands, her claws. They were awash with blood, reeking of the humans dead before her. As she watched, they trembled, a long slow shiver that cascaded up her arms and into her spine.

No.

She advanced towards the bodies of her prey, wanting to be sure they were not breathing. She had to know she had succeeded. That she had killed the ones Master wanted dead. She could—

There was a noise from the tree line behind her, high in the branches and she whipped around. Bounding forward a few paces, the Hunter snorted the air but all she could smell was blood. The noise didn’t come again.

And suddenly she could not bear the stink of it, the blood on her fur, human death in her sensitive nose. She had to get back to Master. He would help her get clean.

With a high, angry yowl the Hunter put her head down and ran away, unto the tree line, and on a straight shot for where she hoped Master would be.

*****

“Smart diversion, arrow boy,” the winged man muttered as he banked and turned into the wind, gaining a few more meters of height.

High above the streets of New York, Falcon glided in near silence, mostly using the updrafts and currents to stay in the air, only activating the jets on his flight suit when it was strictly necessary. Redwing coasted out ahead of him, his sensors all locked onto the bio signs of the tiger woman and both of them watching the tracker beacon pulse gently, moving at speed south east.

The Hunter ran, and the Falcon followed. She sprinted through the streets, moving so fast she was probably gone before any of the other pedestrians noticed she was only covered in fur and blood and a bikini

Then at East 54th and FDR Drive she dove neatly into the water of the East River and began swimming strongly for the south tip Roosevelt Island. Falcon watched until she hauled herself out of the water and disappeared into the gothic ruins of the Smallpox Hospital. He circled a few times but she never emerged. 

“She’s gone to ground, Cap.”

“Copy. Maintain surveillance, we’re headed over.”

Falcon soared on wings of metal, and waited for his team to arrive.


	12. Mind Control for Beginners

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Avengers attacked Sauron in his ‘lair’.
> 
> It dosen’t go great.

The Avengers all arrived at the south tip of Roosevelt island separately, on motorcycles and wings, in cars and then on foot. The NYPD, Spider-Man and the Heros for Hire had all been quietly alerted to what was going on. The ruins of the smallpox hospital — now a heritage site — were empty but for the heros and their targets. 

Thor had just jogged over, since he tended to make a lot of noise when he landed. Bruce was huddled by the Starkcar in the parking lot, looking miserable.

“...just don’t want to wreck a national trust site, okay? I already leveled Harlem,” he’d said miserably to Tony as they got out of the vehicle, followed by the Plunders. The motorcycle contingent was already prepping; Zabu loped up at Thor’s heels. 

Bobbi was pacing off to one side, her hands on her tac googles. She looked up and beckoned Clint over, turning so that she could project an image onto her cupped palm. He stared a moment, then looked up at her, startled. 

“Yeah, I see it. Not sure what we can do with it.”

“Just so you know it’s there.”

Steve looked over. “Do I want to ask?”

Bobbi shook her head. “Clint’s going to be far enough away that Lykos can’t take his mind quickly. The ground fighter crew won’t be.”

“What’d about you, golden girl?” Bucky drawled, his hands never stopping from checking every action and failure point on his weapons. No one had bothered to try and stop him from coming but he had a stationary position assigned and the fear of every god put into him if he tried to engage hand to hand. 

“I’ve faced him before. I know his tricks.”

The team formed up, ran over the battle plan and raised their weapons in a wave around the circle, the ritual beginning of combat for them.

“Avengers, Assemble,” Captain America intoned. 

They split up and out, the flyers shooting skyward carrying the Winter Soldier and Hawkeye; Black Widow and Mockingbird, with Zabu, splitting to each side and disappearing into the shadows, Thor and Captain America jumping the full three stories to stand on the remnants of the outside walls of the hospital ruin. The Plunders and Bruce stayed by the vehicles, watching the portable read outs and waiting.

Cap crouched in the shadow of cupola, staring down into the remains of the once proud building. His artist’s eye could make out two separate architecture styles, a main core flanked by two later additions. He could vaguely remember hearing of classmate’s father or uncles having worked on those additions — 1903? 1905?

The ruin of the smallpox hospital was little more than a stone shell. The roof, floor slabs, windows and stairwells had been stripped away or decayed in time. The beautiful gothic arches of the windows, the crenellation and the parapets of the roof line — those remained. He could just pick out steel beams shoring up key spots of the walls. 

And down in the center of the space, in what would have been a courtyard, a bonfire was burning. 

A makeshift throne of rubble and what looked like a plastic tarp had been constructed on the far side of the fire. Lounging on it was that ... person ... Bobbi had shown them: the were-pteranodon. Lykos. Sauron. 

Somehow, his hybrid body was more frightening in the flesh, sending a crawling, gnawing sensation up Steve’s spine at the _wrongness_ of it. The flickering shadows and leaping gusts of flame from the bonfire didn’t help the sensation of perfect alienation. 

On the other side of the fire, turned partially away, was the tiger woman. Greer. 

He’d read the whole file Bobbi had prepared on her. Her life had been tragic, hard: losing her husband, having her second career stripped from her by the university she studied at when she and her mentor lost funding. Presumed dead with no one left to mourn her. And then this, this strange new body — beautiful and lethal and somehow imprisoned by the will of the monster she faced.

She was in a three point stance, her long tail lashing. He’d been allergic to cats — he’d been allergic to _everything_ — as a kid so he didn’t know much about them but even he could tell that was agitation. 

“Hawk up,” came Hawkeye’s voice through the coms, echoed by “Winter up” from the Winter Soldier a beat later. Cap turned his head a little and saw Iron Man ghost up high above them all, moving on silent mode. Behind him, Falcon swept past and circled. 

“Mock and Kitty, south,” was the next call. Then “Widow, north.”

Captain America raised his fist and let it fall. 

And he and the God of Thunder fell with it. They landed on either side of the bonfire. The tiger woman let out a startled yowl and leapt straight over the flames, clearing them in a single leap. She landed at the base of the throne and whipped her head back and forth, struggling to keep both men in view. 

Sauron was also clearly shocked at their appearance but immediately reared up out of his seat. He towered over both men, seven feet tall at least and suddenly spread his great wings with a dramatic gesture: flesh and elongated bone flaring out like a cape twelve feet across. 

“You fool!” He shrieked in an oddly piping, high pitched voice. “You led the Avengers to me!” 

His left wing hammered out and smashed the tiger woman off her feet, back over the bonfire but this time through the flames. She screamed as her fur singed, small flames appeared, then instinctively rolling them out against the remnant of the cobbles of the courtyard. 

“Treat the lady with respect, villain,” snarled Thor. 

“Dr Lykos, stand down. We’re here to take you into custody and the lady too. Just sit down and put your hands...paws...talons on the top of your head,” Captain America said sternly. “You’re under arrest for murder, at the bare minimum.”

The great red eyes above the toothed beak in the center of the mutate’s face flashed with light, boring into Captain America’s. “You aren’t going to arrest me, fool,” the dinosaur man hissed. “You’re going to take that shield and try to smash the Asgardian’s head off.” He leaned forward, long neck contracting like a crane, hypnotic power pouring off of him in waves.

Captain America raised his shield...

...and set it into a more comfortable position on his arm. He tapped the integrated lenses of his helmet and face mask with his free hand. “I think you’ll find making eye contact a little difficult, Lykos.”

Iron Man had polarized and shifted the angles of all of their combat eye wear so that it was impossible to look any of them directly in the eyes. It was giving them all minor headaches but that was a small price to pay. 

Thor had turned away from the humanoid dinosaur and was tracking the tiger woman as she paced and spun in the shadows outside the reach of the bonfire. She was neither retreating or attacking, looking confused and enraged by turn. 

“Morse,” Sauron snarled. “I had so hoped my tiger there would be able to rip her fool throat out too, but I supposed I’ll have to settled for knowing the Plunders are dead and mounting your head on my trophy wall.”

“Last chance, Lykos. Give yourself up, now, and order Ms. Nelson to stand down as well.”

At the sound of her human name the tiger woman bolted upright and stared at Captain America, her eyes huge and confused. 

“I’ll see you all dead first!” Sauron shrieked, slamming his hand down onto something hanging from the belt he was wearing. 

Absurdly, Captain America noticed he was wearing what had once been board shorts. He could make out the faded remnants of a surfing logo on the leg. 

The tiger woman fell sideways, clutching at her neck, screaming. 

Captain America gave the “Assemble!” hand signal and the Avengers all came pouring into the space, Falcon swooping over head and Iron Man hovering. Only Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier stayed in place, somewhere up on the walls of the ruin. 

Mockingbird made a beeline for the tiger woman, hands reaching. Zabu bounded next to here.

“No,” screamed the were-pteranodon at the sight of the sabertooth. “You’re supposed to be dead!”

Sauron shrieked like a bird, high and insane, and raised his arms, flaring those mighty wings again with a cracking noise, fanning the fire. Flame and ashes swirled and then ... from across the water came a murmuring noise and the lights of the city that never sleeps were blotted out by a cloud of ... something. 

In the distance the Avengers could all hear Bruce howl in fear from the parking lot. 

“They were dinosaurs once,” Sauron shrieked, high and nearly hysterical. “I will make them raptors once again!”

“You aren’t going to believe this!” Yelled Hawkeye from his perch. “Pigeons! It’s pigeons!”

The Hulk’s roar blended into the sound of were-pteranodon’s deranged laughter as the vast swarm of mutated pigeons rose up in a dense black cloud over the smallpox hospital.

And fell on them like a tonne of feathered, filthy bricks. 

Falcon was battered out of the sky, his intake jets clogged with pigeon body parts and feathers in seconds. He sent Redwing into high hover to protect the drone. Iron Man was driven upward too, unable to maneuver as tightly as the birds but much faster. Still, enough of them could ground him. He was picking them off in droves but for every bird he crisped (making the air smell half-way between an open sewer and a fried chicken restaurant) ten more took its place. 

Thor managed a few lightning bolts but nearly electrocuted both Black Widow and apparently Hawkeye from the cursing through the coms so he switch to just flailing around with Mjolnir. Hulk, still roaring, landed next to him and began furiously striking out at the increasing dense cloud of horrors.

Mockingbird and Zabu had been driven back from the tiger woman, both of them cut and bleeding in heartbeats. Captain America was spinning and slashing with his shield, cutting swatches of birds out of the air but without great effect. Bullets and arrows lanced through the mist of blood, feathers and dismembered mutate pigeons, the snipers above trying their best. 

They were red-eyed and huge beaked, their feet tipped in talons that looked too big for their bodies. 

“I hate killing animals!” Black Widow yelled.

“They were created to die! These things wouldn’t be able to feed themselves,” Mockingbird yelled back over the coms. “They have fangs!”

“They will feed on your flesh!’” Sauron howled, snapping his wings out again, sending the flames of the fire higher. The tiger woman appeared next to his throne, looking up at him. “Bring me their entrails!” He commanded her. 

And then the Avengers had to contend with not just a never ending wave of small, flying raptors but also a blur of orange and black and shining claws. Hissing loudly enough to be heard above the whirring of wings and the dying cries of the bird she flashed out between the figures, leaving bloody claw marks on on Zabu’s flank, Black Widow’s leg. 

Captain America ordered a retreat, leaving Thor and Hulk — the most physically invulnerable members of the team — on point in the middle of the space. Falcon, Black Widow, Mockingbird and Zabu began backing towards the walls. The arrow and bullet fire from above intensified directly above the alcove they were retreating towards and now both Hawkeye and the Winter Soldier were visible in flashes from the Soldier’s rifle. Iron Man tried to concentrate his fire to the air just before them and for a brief breathless moment they were clear of the pigeon cloud.

And then the tiger woman was there, in their midst. She struck Captain America in the chest, spraying scale mail into the air but not quite penetrating his super Kevlar underlayer. He catapulted backwards, back into the middle of the open area and was instantly covered in clawing, shrieking birds. 

Mockingbird and Falcon both grabbed her, one on each arm. For a brief second she was still, held transfixed by them. Black Widow snapped her Bite out, trying to shock her on the side of the head. 

The tiger woman arched upwards into a jumping kick that just missed tearing Black Widow’s throat out and did manage to shake Falcon loose. She screamed, a triumphant sound, and suddenly Mockingbird was over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry. She leapt, impossibly high and far, graceful as a dancer, right over the fire and threw the Avenger at Sauron’s feet, then bounded past him into the shadows.

The were-pteranodon scooped Mockingbird into his freakishly long arms and circled her throat with his talons, obviously about to rip it out. Mockingbird grabbed his hand, kicking and snarling as her hauled her off her feet. He was using her body to obscure the aim of the Avengers on the ground. 

His hand tightened but instead of blood appearing on her neck she began to convulse, kicking and flailing, her motions grower weaker and smaller with each heartbeat.

The cloud of pigeons screamed and fled upwards in en masse, as though the mutate wanted the team to have a clear view of his actions. 

“I’ll drain you dry, finally, you witch!” Screamed out of the beaked, toothy horror of a mouth. 

Captain America, blood pouring down his face from wounds opened by the birds scrambled up, getting ready to throw the shield, knowing that neither he nor any of his team would be able to stop —

A single arrow slashed past him, towards the two figures.

And disappeared into the darkness beyond Sauron’s head.

“Haaaaaaahahahahahahhah!” The mutate screamed. “So much for the vaunted skill of Hawkeye! I thought you never missed!” He tightened his grip on Mockingbird, now the blood starting from the points of his claws on her neck as her struggles began to utterly fail. 

“He didn’t misssssssssssssshhhhh,” came a voice from behind him, low and velvet and pregnant with menace.

Four long rips appeared in the flap of his left wing, spraying blood. Sauron screamed and dropped Mockingbird, who crawled away from him, shaking. Falcon had her in his arms and out of the way in the next second. 

The tiger woman, bleeding from a slash on the side of her neck, vaulted over into the light of the fire, a thin broken silver circlet in one hand. “Would you like your colllllllllar back, masssssster?” She snarled, then flung it into his face, even as he clutched his mutilated wing against his chest. 

He glared at her, his eyes flashing, glowing red with power. She shuddered and went still, her face growing slack. 

And that was when Red Wing dropped straight out of the sky and sprayed a high energy laser light across his face. 

The were-Pteranodon shrieked, a thin high ululation of pain and fear and staggered backwards, into his ‘throne’ which hit him on the back of the knees, knocking him to his side and sending him sprawling on the ground.

The tiger woman shook like a leaf for a moment then reared up and pounced on him like a cat on a mouse. Her claws rose up and down in wild strikes, spraying blood into the air. 

In contrast to Sauron’s agonized howling, she set about murdering him in near total silence.

Then the mutated pigeons were back, dropping from the sky like small feathered meteors, battering at the tiger woman with their wings and beaks, driving her off her prey. They huddled on top of him, more and more of them, until no more were coming, cropping onto him in a thick, heaving mound — which shuddered and went perfectly, utterly still.

The mound of what was now pigeon corpses exploded upwards and outwards as Sauron rose to his full height and snapped his wings out again. His wounds were fully healed—he’d drained the life force from his helpless victims to save his own skin, literally.

He jumped high, touched down on the back of the throne and leapt into the air, wings driving hard. The tiger woman hurled herself after him but he’d already gained so much altitude she had no hope of grabbing him. The battered, bruised Avengers on the ground stared up in horror as the were-pteranodon escaped them.

Which is when Iron Man casually swooped down behind Sauron and grabbed him by the back of the neck.

“Not sure if pigeon genocide is a crime or not but there are those murder charges,” Tony said casually over the coms, fired his boot jets and dove straight down towards the clearing, towing Sauron with him. Halfway there a single projectile was flung from a secluded section of the parapet of the hospital: a flash bang thrown in a lazy arc that concealed the power behind the arm that threw it. 

Iron Man threw the dinosaur man at the small silver sphere. It connected with his chest the instant before it exploded with a deafening thud and blinding flash.

Sauron fell the remaining twenty or so feet to the ground to land in a graceless, slightly smoking heap.

The tiger woman, recovering fast from the effects of the grenade, made a ‘rawwwr’ noise and leapt towards him, claws out in murder position. 

She landed, raised her talons...

And was enveloped in a billowing cloud of misty particles. 

When it cleared, Captain America was revealed just behind where she had been standing. He looked down at her, rolling on her back on a sparse patch of grass and side.

“Sorry about that Ms. Nelson but we couldn’t let you just murder him. No matter how much he deserved it.”


	13. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tigra awakens

Greer — she was Greer again, the Hunter no longer ascendent — opened her eyes to a ceiling painted a soothing cream color, muted indirect lighting and the stale smell of recycled air. She was lying on a very comfortable bed, in a small, bare, scrupulously clean room. She was wearing shorts and a sports bra, both white cotton, also scrupulously clean. 

She reached up and touched her neck. The gouge in her fur and muscle was lined with neat stitches and coated with what was probably liquid bandage; it smelled of antiseptic. Hawkeye’s arrow had hurt as it slashed through the control collar Sauron forced onto her, to allow him to extend his mind control over time and distance. She was grateful for the pain; it had freed her. 

Looking down at her claws, she saw the were gleaming clean, dark and sharp and wicked. 

There was a cough, obviously piped through a sound system, and then one wall of the room went transparent for about a third of its surface. On the other side was a tall blond woman in jeans and a T-shirt and Greer _hated her so muc—_

No.

Greer didn’t know her. Well, she knew her name—Bobbi Morse—and that _Sauron_ hated her, that she’d been one of the Hunter’s targets of opportunity _kill if you can_ but not a primary concern. 

“Hey, sorry about the clothes. We had to check you over for any other devices, or prone to infection giant prehistoric fanged pigeon related injuries. Plus wash the blood out of your fur. But it’s all recorded, if you want to watch and be sure there was no hanky panky.”

Greer levered herself up into a crouch on the blanket that had been under her, not covering her, tail twitching. 

The blond—Bobbi—burst into a grin. “Holy heck that’s pretty! You do move just like a big cat, it’s a treat to watch!”

“You think it’s ... puurrrretty?” She ground out, unable to keep the feline pur out of her voice.

“It’s beautiful, Ms. Nelson. You’re absolutely incredible.” Bobbi cocked her head. “Was this what you expected from Tumulo’s experiments?”

Greer blinked at her, shocked, then shook her head. “We weren’t _expecting_ anything in particular, other than some kind of super soldier. It was ... shocking ... when I first saw myself. Well, I was shocked. Joanne—I was never sure if she knew and just didn’t want to tell me.” Her tail lashed hard, telegraphing her sudden agitation. 

Bobbi held up her hand. “Listen, the first rule of Avengers Tower is you don’t have to talk about your past. I apologize for saying anything.”

“What’s the second rule?” Greer spat, her emotions still high. “Lock up the freaks?”

The blond woman cocked her head at her, lips pressed together. “It’s more common than not, Ms. Nelson, that people around here wake up from medical procedures punching. Given you slashed through super kevlar no one wanted to make you the accidental murderer of our staff.” She gestured to Greer’s right, where a door was visible. “That’s not locked. You’re not a prisoner or a criminal.”

“I can leave?”

“Anytime you want. No one will follow you. But — and I’m sorry to say this so bluntly — you don’t have anywhere to go.“

Greer slumped as the reality of that sentence struck home. She was a widow, she’d left her PHD program to follow Joanne Tumulo’s manic dreams. Her apartment in Chicago and everything she’d owned had to be long gone. She could vaguely remember years passing, some of it in a jungle with ... dinosaurs? But also another place, a city? Over run with cats?

The more she reached for that memory the more it faded.

She looked up as the door opened and the blond walked into the room, caring a hand towel. “Sorry, I don’t have a handkerchief on me,” she said as she handed it over.

Greer realized then that she was crying. She wiped her eyes and snuffled into the cloth a bit as Bobbi perched on the end of the bed with a sad, sympathetic expression.

“We can help you, you know. Stark Legal has an entire division just for dealing with ‘people who are no longer dead, oh and also now have super powers or benign alien parasites or robotic dogs they need to get through customs’. They call it the ‘What The Hell?” Group.”

“That’s nice,” Greer snapped, still agitated and off balance. “But what do I do until we convince the government I’m still...me?”

Bobbi cocked her head again in that bird like way, obviously something she did unconsciously. “You live here, obviously.”

Greer dropped the towel, staring. “What?”

“We have the space. You need the time, to recover from whatever Sauron did to you, from your transformation, to try and get a handle on your life, what you want it to be now. It’s safe here. No one can get at you. You’re surrounded by the highest concentration of people on the planet who think having a human-tiger chimera waltzing around in a bikini is just an interesting roommate. It’s a safe space for people who’ve been side-stepped outside humanity a little bit.”

Greer blinked at her. “What about that guy I almost killed? The one who tried to shoot me?”

“Yeah, I guess maybe don’t attack him without permission? Other than that Bucky’s pretty chill about people trying to kill him. Most of us have at some point. I hit him in the face with Cap’s shield once.”

Despite herself, Greer laughed. “How did you know not to dress me in clothes?”

“Hmmm? Oh, it was pretty obvious you regulate body temperature like an actual cat, from the medical scans. Figured covering you up would just over heat you.” Bobbi stuck out her hand. “Let’s start over. I’m Bobbi Barton but I answer to Mockingbird too. I promise not to throw anymore catnip grenades at you, unless you want me to.”

Greer reached out her hand...her paw...covered in silky orange fur, tipped with those lethal talons. “I ... was Greer Grant Nelson. I’m not sure who, what I am now.”

“Who,” said Bobbi firmly, grasping her hand without fear or pause. And Greer felt her claws retract, so as not to hurt anyone. She couldn’t remember if she’d always known she could do that.

Bobbi grinned at her. “We’ll have to get you a media title. It’s just easier then having your soon to be legal again name out in the open all the time.”

“A code name? “ Greer settled back into a sitting position, from her state of cat-like readiness. 

“Sure. We were calling you ‘Tiger Lady’ but that’s not going to fly. Clunky. Anyway, you should pick your own.”

Greer looked down at herself, a memory floating around at the back of her head, then up at Mockingbird.

“Call me...call me Tigra.”


End file.
